5th Anniversary Post – Getting Personal?

I suppose, it’s a bit weird to crawl out of the wood work and post about this; consider this my official return from haitus? I am very much a creature of habit and can’t resist the call of a scheduled post. So we’re back, and unlike last year which was a bit of a boring post, this one will be… sad? I guess? Being generous to myself it’s waxing poetic, but eh.

I posted back in February about going on hiatus, pretty suddenly and dramatically. There was a reason for that. Actually there were a few reasons, but I don’t want to get in too deep there. The biggest reasons, in relation to blogging, were two fold. The first being I had nothing prepared for the rest of the month. I thought I had more time and didn’t. It was really that simple. Instead of just taking the L and picking myself up again I spiraled a bit. I’m still digging myself out of that, I’m mostly over it. I think. It’s a very superficial thing, but sometimes I take things a bit too hard.

The second, and larger reason was it suddenly occurred to me. My writing sucked.

I reviewed the posts I had published before, and I felt pretty good about them. A bit of a stylistic change from my previous stuff, but it was growth. An attempt to do something different was better then not writing anything at all. Even if it didn’t go over well I liked them.

I then looked at my drafts, of which there were about six or seven. I read one, thinking about all I needed was a few more minor edits and some pictures and it would be ready to go. But as I read what I wrote, I couldn’t help but think it was the most boring and contrived thing I had ever written. There wasn’t a single line I wrote that I liked, so I took the idea of the post, saved it for later and trashed the post itself.

I think you can guess, but of those drafts only a few survived to be published.

Since I had plucked the original concepts from the posts I scrapped, I could for sure come back to them at some point. So I went through my secret stash of ideas and tried a different one. I felt good writing it, but wanted to let the post rest before finishing it. Of course, I came back to it and… had I always used so much fluff when writing? There were entire paragraphs I had written, that I had liked writing, that said absolutely nothing. There was no meaning to them, and it contributed very little to the core idea. Slashing away at these paragraphs, I barely had ten sentences strung together that formed a coherent thought, let alone qualified as a post for me.

I stopped and started so many posts, so many times to the same effect. I threw in the towel, for just a moment at least, and tried to focus on commenting.

It’s so troupe-y but I felt the words drying up on my tongue, and on my finger tips. What was I even trying to say when I typed some of my comments to other bloggers? I know for a fact, since a lot of bloggers I interact with (and many I haven’t) have gone on the record that they’re grateful for a comment always. A little like does one thing, a comment is always appreciated too. I knew that I wouldn’t be judged for one or two more goofy sounding comments, but…

If my writing sucked, now my comments suck, what was left?

I sat with that for awhile, and being honest… I didn’t handle it well. Nothing drastic, nothing dangerous, but the notion that all my writing sucked plus other circumstances just kept compounding on top of everything else I was juggling with. It was inevitable that a few of the juggled plates would crash and two of those were: media consumption, and blogging.

I haven’t touched dramas or anime since January with a singular exception, and it’s not even that good. I spent a lot of time, probably too much time listening to so-so video essays, drama about influencers I don’t care about, and other crap. I couldn’t tell you what I do in my spare time because… I don’t do too much these days.

Of course, without dramas, movies, anime and the like; I don’t have a ton of material for my blog. At least at face value. And surprisingly… I was okay with that. At least for now.

I realized a long time ago that my media diet of almost exclusively consisting of Japanese media wasn’t the best. I actually recruited my irl friends to do a non-traditional book club. Mostly because none of us live nearby. We all picked different books, are annotating them with our thoughts and feelings, and trading them as we finish them via the mail.

I’ve decided to focus on getting many of my off-line issues resolved. It’s been a bit of an ugly process. That’s actually a huge time commitment that I wasn’t anticipating but it’s worth it. Despite the ugly and admittedly slow nature to it, I do have some feasible progress on that front.

As for blogging – I guess I’ve reached some area of acceptance that maybe my writing does suck?

I don’t mean that in a self-pitying way either. Any form of expression, writing, drawing, photography has it’s cycles of ups and downs. Sometimes you hit a dip, sometimes you improve like crazy, it’s just been a long time since I hit a decline like this.

I won’t say that I don’t care. I do. It’s very clear that I do care, a lot actually. But I’ve come to a point where I’m okay with sucking a bit. You have to start, in my case re-start, somewhere to be kinda decent again and then get better.

So I’ve written a handful of posts. Some of them are stupidly simple and honestly goofy but… I think they’re fun. I like them. I still want to tinker with them a bit more and really think a few of them through a little longer but they’ll see the publish button. I’ve been doing my best that despite how clumsy, and potentially ill-constructed my comments are – I keep writing them and posting them when I can.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I do sincerely appreciate it especially since this post is emotionally heavy. Especially since it’s an anniversary post. It’s still not exactly a celebratory one. I’ll work on that for next year?

I’m not giving up blogging, not by a long shot. I just need a bit more time to regain my confidence. So I hope you’ll stick around and see that return. I’m looking forward to another year of blogging, from myself and everyone else.

For now, I’ll see you around the blog-o-sphere!

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