It Happened, We Knew it Would and It Did

I could make up some elaborate lie here as to why everything in my life was so monumentally important that I abandoned my blog and while it was important and I was busy, there is simply no excuse. Instead I am going to use this time to reflect on why I have NEVER been successful with keeping a journal (sans a limited period of time in Europe) and the fact the mere notion sets me up for failure. It's that grand idea of "forever." Now before everyone hits the roof, and by everyone I mean my whopping six readers, and shouts..."YOU JUST GOT MARRIED!" I am not talking about forever like that. Commitment to people, to friends, that I can do. Commitment to a task, a weekly, daily, even monthly task feels so utterly constricting I yank against the chains like you were strapping me in the electric chair/gas chamber contraption/guillotine...you get my drift.

I know there are plenty of people who will point out this is just the mental manifestation of my incredible lack of discipline. Okay, fair. I can work on that. I have worked on that and will likely continue to work on it for the rest of my life. It's not really the activity or even a lack of wanting to do that activity it is the feeling of being ordered to do said activity. I admit to being a rebel without a cause, no good reason to rebel. Great life, great friends, great parents, no significant, unrecoverable trauma. I even like my family...so I don't even have that!? But from a very young age I have been the "why" girl. I got the case of the three-year-old whys that just never went away. My aunt likes to tell the story of how I asked so many "why" questions she finally told me to shut up and stop asking why, to which my ridiculously large, pig tailed head replied, "how come?" With a story like that, I think it is fair to say it is just in my DNA. And without some sort of why instant gratification, you are hard pressed to get me to do anything I don't want to do.

Then comes the liking people thing. My Dad refers to me as the "social butterfly" and consistently questions my liking of so many people. He does not believe there are that many interesting folks on the planet, well not worth spending time on anyway. He's just not that social so I have always been an enigma. In general journaling, blogging, jogging, reading, biking, hiking, swimming...the list goes on, unless it is driven by need and/or a social atmosphere, gets put on the back burner. I LOVE all of these things. I love pontificating about life. I love writing. I love reading things other people write and I definitely love frolicking in the water. But if I don't have a good friend to do it with or some pressing drive, it seems to get put on the list of, maybe in an hour I will do it. Now work is a need, I can rise to the occasion and get things done. Of course, being the driver of my own deadlines has been a learning curve I have had to catch up to. Film project wise I am good, constantly working, but the writing for a living thing, that can be tough. Needless to say I have had my share of 3 am wake-up calls in order to make rent. This is another hurdle in the blogging/journaling world.

Finally it's the "no end it sight" problem. With work, projects and plans you have an end date. A time when that project will be over and you get to move onto something new. If you plan to journal it's FOREVER. So when you put it off one night or week and you try to pick it back up you feel like you "owe" it something. That's why I was successful in Europe, six weeks, definitive end date, just suck it up and write for 15 minutes before you go to bed. So, as I started to feel that way all through June with my blog I am going to test my "game theory" with my blog. I will be back to my Monday reporting for the summer. Until the end date of September 30th. At which time I may or may not take a break, hiatus, or just change my publishing day. Whatever it ends up being that's the goal as of this July 5th. If it works maybe I can make it work with roller blading, heck maybe I should run the experiments concurrently. But why?