The first casualty of stress . . .
. . . apparently, is blogging. For a variety of reasons, I have been pretty stressed out lately. I can't really get into details--it might upset certain people, and there's always the possibility of getting dooced. (To get dooced: to lose one's job after bitching and/or saying "inappropriate" things about said job on one's blog.) Let's just say that I don't exactly love my job these days. In fact, it's Saturday morning and I'm getting ready to work right now, which makes me love my job even less. It helps a bit to read articles like this one and smile and nod a lot, but the stress remains nonetheless.
Which is why I haven't been blogging much. Many times I have pulled up the blog screen and stared at the white space (the writer's modern-day equivalent of the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter), harboring great intentions. Then I start thinking about everything I'm stressed about. Then I go into the tank. (This is a poker term for deep thinking.) Then 20 minutes somehow go by, and I realize I have completely lost all grasp of whatever it was I was going to write about. (All the writers out there are smiling and nodding. Aren't you?) The sad truth is, I have blogger's block.
The strange thing is that when I was younger, I wrote more when I was stressed out. In fact, the more stressed I was, the more I wrote. All that young angst, you know, just pouring out, in journal after journal. I guess that part's not so strange. But I don't keep a journal anymore--I have not done so since the incident. And of course, although we often refer to blogs as online journals, they are so not. The difference between the private versus public nature of each medium is vast. Unless you have a secret blog (which some people apparently do), your blog is definitely not a journal. Granted, some people have fewer qualms than others about airing their personal shit in public, and people have various degrees of sensitivity about hurting other people's feelings. Do I know where I'm going with this? Not really.
See, even now, I'm thinking about the work I should be doing and not concentrating on the blog. I really need to snap out of this.
Which is why I haven't been blogging much. Many times I have pulled up the blog screen and stared at the white space (the writer's modern-day equivalent of the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter), harboring great intentions. Then I start thinking about everything I'm stressed about. Then I go into the tank. (This is a poker term for deep thinking.) Then 20 minutes somehow go by, and I realize I have completely lost all grasp of whatever it was I was going to write about. (All the writers out there are smiling and nodding. Aren't you?) The sad truth is, I have blogger's block.
The strange thing is that when I was younger, I wrote more when I was stressed out. In fact, the more stressed I was, the more I wrote. All that young angst, you know, just pouring out, in journal after journal. I guess that part's not so strange. But I don't keep a journal anymore--I have not done so since the incident. And of course, although we often refer to blogs as online journals, they are so not. The difference between the private versus public nature of each medium is vast. Unless you have a secret blog (which some people apparently do), your blog is definitely not a journal. Granted, some people have fewer qualms than others about airing their personal shit in public, and people have various degrees of sensitivity about hurting other people's feelings. Do I know where I'm going with this? Not really.
See, even now, I'm thinking about the work I should be doing and not concentrating on the blog. I really need to snap out of this.
posted by flipper @ 11:16 AM
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