Popping the cherry

The perfectionist in me (most of my personality!) doesn’t want to set a foot wrong.  Wants to be pithy and witty and captivating, just like the bloggers I admire most.  Is desperate to know all the jargon and shortcuts, the etiquette: in short – everything there is to know.

The closet writer in me just wants to get going.  Put some words on a page. Begin somewhere. But hesitates in case the perfectionist complains about the quality.  The spontaneity is lost as the backseat editor starts overseeing the line of thought before it is even fully formed.

The pragmatist in me keeps piping up reminding the rest of us (!) that we could be cleaning the top of the fridge, or out pruning the roses, or the million other things that need doing, and that how can this be a reasonable use of time???  It demands justification.

‘So easy to give in to us’, they whisper, ‘and just forget about the whole thing’.  But this time I shall ignore them because I am on a quest.  An adventure where I practice trying new things I have a passing an interest in, to see if I like them; to practice hard at not needing to be the top of the class, the best in show; to practice developing my impulsive side, the one that has been sat upon so often by the perfectionist and the pragmatist it feels like a flame reduced to a flicker.  To practice dabbling and not necessarily committing myself to eternal servitude.  It sounds almost like freedom.

So while you may be reading this blog for content, and content it will contain (at some stage!) I will also be writing it for the process.  The process of developing my WHOLE self.  Of laying that whole self bare and seeing if I like it.  Of finding parts of me that have never had the chance to see the light of day.  That is what I hope to achieve.  And if I can also come up with a product with which I am satisfied, well all to the good.

A few of my (IF) online friends have suggested I write a blog, and I have wanted to for some time.  The reasons I haven’t done so yet, are among those listed above.  What has spurred me on to finally act now, is a desire to participate in NaComLeavMo.  I read a few select blogs regularly and rarely comment.  Mostly because I feel whatever I have to say would sound either too trite, take too long to formulate and may be still misunderstood, or just requires more energy than I feel I have left at the end of the day.  But I also feel as though this community [specifically IF – I wouldn’t have got through my relentless losses nearly so well without all the online support I have received] is an important one and is worth supporting. Which means getting involved, and giving something back.  And maybe while I am at it sharing something of myself.  So perhaps I can do this without having to make it bigger than Ben-Hur. That is my own private challenge.

I’m not sure how this set up works: where to put the bit about my history, how to make links, I don’t even know how much there is to know!  So it might be time to go take a look around at my environment, and risk getting a few things wrong. (Oh the horror!).  And now I can go sign up for NaComLeavMo.

There, see, that didn’t hurt a bit.

(Apart from the fact that it is now dark, the house is only half vacuumed and wholly uncleaned, I have no idea what I am going to prepare for dinner and my husband will be home in no time at all, wondering what I have done with my day while he is out working hard).  So it might seem as though my first hurdle may be guilt….