The Problem With Blogging

The problem with blogging is that, at least for me, it does not have any due dates.  I know there are professional bloggers who, much like other journalists, have deadlines, but as an amateur blogger this is not the case.

 Now, there are a couple of reasons that this is problematic.  The first being my Pavlovian response to due dates that was cultivated by 13 years of public schooling.  People who have known me since grade school may laugh as I was notorious for not getting homework in on time, but with the exception of a single 11^th grade journalism paper that I made a very calculated decision not to write, I had a fairly good record for handing papers in on time. I consider blog posts, at least the ones that aren’t just cute pictures of my children, to be in the same category as papers  as my writing process for both is very similar.

The second reason has to do with my writing process itself.  A lot of my writing is created and refined before I ever put a pen to paper or open a new word document.  During my school years, I would often to sit down to write papers, even the 10 page ones, the night before and have very little trouble finishing them in time to hand them in.  This is because as soon as I would read the instructions for a paper I would begin to write the paper in my head; by the time I sat down to actually write the paper, I was typing up the product of days and weeks worth of thought.  Under the constraints of deadlines, this writing process works beautifully, but without a deadline to reign me in, I can think and think about how I will write about a topic, but I never get to the sitting down and writing it out part. 

Now that I have realized what the problem is, I am actively trying to get to the writing it out step in my process so that I can share more here than just a handful of pictures every few weeks.  I can’t promise anything brilliant, but hopefully in this space I will start maintaining more of a balance between words and images.