It Will Be Mine

Last September, I eked out a sad post on a particularly bad night and fell back into silence.  In November, I tried to follow up with some kind of explanation/return attempt.  I gave up and quite forgot about it.  A few days ago I suddenly remembered  that I had an unpublished post sitting here and read it.  It's honest and possibly just as pathetic, but I still liked it.  Mostly because I like myself these days.  I'm kinder to my mind's offspring.  I allowed it to stand, and it appears below, after which I hope to continue the story because I must.  
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My last post was pathetic, even to me. Pathetic has been sneaking in for a while now, in absences and mentions.  That night in...was it really September?...revealed it in all its  inglorious nakedness.  But I really was trying to get at truth.  I still am.

The truth is that I began this blog in utter naivete and somewhere lost my first-grade pride in just doing it, succumbing instead to frustrations, outsize hopes, and wasteful envy. I've been frustrated by my lack of progress in photography skills, which was compounded by my perfectionistic desire to have my blog be as beautiful as others I see.  And successful.  Don't forget that.  Hordes of followers, droves of commenters.  I found myself wanting it all.  And that's a lousy reason to do anything.  It smacks of high school approval seeking.  I really wanted to be past that.  Apparently I'm not.

I first dried up after we fell in love with and moved into our barn/house.  I had begun writing with a story line of townies moving to their country dream life.  I blathered on about house and farm plans, trumpeted big schemes---and veered away from all that, without really understanding why (although I do now--more about that later).  I felt sheepish, a little afraid that readers would think negatively of me.  As if it matters.  I have to live my own life, and a blog is, by its very nature, the personal prerogative of the author.  The discomfort was probably entirely my own, but it dented my enjoyment.

Then there was that frustration with photography.  I have not advanced in the mastery of light or of the camera I have.  It just hasn't happened.  That took some of the fun out of this thing, too.

Reading other blogs didn't help either. They're beautiful and/or well written and reminded me that mine was not either.  It all became an exercise in flagellation and envy, leaking through the seams of my posts and finally landing with a thud in the last one.  I was trying to get down to truth in the hope that something good would come of it.  Instead, the pathos ante was upped embarrassingly.

But I still believe in personal truth.  There are moments when it works very well to state honestly and openly what is true for me at the moment ("I'm feeling really awkward right now" etc.), paving the way for honesty in return and usually relief all round. 

So...I'm feeling really awkward right now.  Even this isn't going well.  And now it's time to go to bed and focus on the fact that I have a new job.  Go with what's working and move on.  I don't have to do everything well.  That includes this blog. 

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I can't say that I'm proud of this post, but I own it.  I'm human, and here I am being publicly so.  The things that we're truly meant to do, the activities that define us, will not leave us alone until we do them.  Eventually, we have no choice but to follow instructions or live in torture.  Desire nags like a mother.  No, like a whiny, insistent child.

My husband has a similar struggle.  Creativity is hard.  It would be so much easier to work our good jobs, watch a little TV after dinner (if we had TV), and go to bed.  But we can't.  It always seems that there's something missing if we're not doing something creative. 

So we have made a new year pact at mid year.  Starting today, we will return to our creative endeavors regularly and intentionally.  It feels a bit like I'm climbing back onto the wagon---again--but I take that risk.  Making life a finer thing is not without risk and hard knocks and effort.  And I am no quitter.

I don't know what this blog will be now.  But it will be, and it will be mine.