Pearls&Grit

Every so often I get hit square in the face with moments of intense and extreme clarity.

These are uncomfortable moments. Messy moments. Even painful moments. These moments don’t last very long, but the end result, no matter how fleeting, is always acute clarity.

(As an aside: I love the word “clarity.” If I were to have another baby I might strongly consider using Clarity as a name. Most likely though, someday I will just have another standard poodle named Clarity…and what a beautiful baby girl she will be!)

I had one of those moments recently and it unabashedly confronted me about my blog. The thoughts hit me like a ton of bricks:

Why do I write?

What is my motivation?

And THEN I went into a deep derth of writing where my blog didn’t receive a single tiny bit of attention from me for months on end. Then I returned and wrote one of those “I’m back!” apology posts. (Although I feel like I did an excellent job thinly veiling the essence of that particular post.) But I still didn’t make writing a priority.

So THEN I went and spent an afternoon trying to figure out how to delete the Facebook group I had created, linking to my blog, in effort to get my friends from that social medium to come boost my blog views. Higher stats equaled a higher sense of accomplishment and also more pressure to create posts that would please people.

THEN I realized the pressure to create posts that I thought those viewers from Facebook might like, created a paralyzing inability to write anything. Because somehow I had managed to absorb a high level of mythical expectation for myself. Now, being a very Type A personality, that amount of personalized responsibility (albeit misplaced) was too much and I just stopped writing. The numberless amounts of super random thoughts that I scribble down during the day, were pushed to the wayside because they didn’t fit my “niche” (whatever the heck my “niche” is.)

But THEN when the pressure of creating content that would boost my stats was gone, I suddenly realized I was excited about opening the computer and typing. Now, one could say, “If you don’t like the pressure of creating words for stats, why aren’t you just journaling?”

Well that is a solid point, however, it discredits my love for typing. I love typing. I love the sound, the fluidity, the feeling of fingers just flying without recourse…I love typing. I also love the feel of a finished “published” product. It is addictive, that word “Publish.”

Initially, yes, I attacked this whole blogging thing with grand expectations of making a billion dollars and being able to gift Mike Honcho his retirement and move to Bermuda with my family. But reality set in and I realized most days I am lucky that the milk gets back in the fridge.

I started the blog as a platform for building my life coach/counseling business. I’m still a long way off from having proper credentials and feeing comfortable enough to be able to tout myself as such. Therefore, although, I will always attempt to attack the deep stuff on occasion, that’s not the focus at this juncture. Instead, I’m back to making my own personal pearls out of my own personal grit. Writing about aluminum foil, poodles, and living on the road is how I do that!

So while I will not be totally surprised when the New York Times comes a-callin’ because they desperately need a writer of my caliber to add dimension to their publication, I am now going to just write.

And THAT, my friends, is not a Bold Faced Lie.