quadruple bypass blogging

fellow blogger jaggd wrote a really interesting post recently about his motivation for blogging...or, as the post explains, perhaps his recent lack thereof.

ever since i moved to blogspot from pitas, i've been trying to keep my posts minimally about my personal life; i enjoy putting up interesting articles and recommendations so people can see what i am interested in, but i've been trying not to get too detailed. my biggest exception, as i think is natural, is when i am upset; this is the time when i feel most alone, and thus need to "vent" the most.

ironically, this is the time when words are most difficult for me to form. how do you talk about yourself and your issues without sounding really, painfully, self-involved? tricky.

what's more, it is during these periods that i feel zero motivation to write. part of it is that, like my friend, i think that no one is going to read it anyway. no one cares. that is a powerful toxin to creative expression, i think.

another part of it is that lack of motivation comes part and parcel with feeling blue; it's a defining characteristic, in fact.

the other thing that happens is that i write, and then i hate what i produce. i strive to be funny, insightful, interesting...then i end up positive i sound ridiculous, like i am trying too hard. it's an interesting beast. [blogger's note: another fellow blogger and old friend sakusha also has some very eloquent words about inspiration and writing. click the link & search the page for post title "broken silence" and "disjointed ramble."]

anyway, i had a blog post planned tonight to touch a bit on the topic of hospitals. my grandfather is going in for a quadruple bypass tomorrow. the post might have reflected on my decision tonight that i really do not like hospitals (tonight being only my third hospital experience i can remember), also fattened up a bit with facts that i gathered about the procedure from web md (which, if you have never visited, is an awesome site - UNLESS YOU ARE SICK), and, as can only be expected, perhaps a couple thoughts on death as well.

but you know what? it just seemed too personal.

so i got to thinking about blogging. i used to (and still do) blog about personal things, and as you can probably already tell, i certainly have no problem not shutting up! about philosophical/psychological things. so what's the issue? i'm not sure.

somewhere between planning my post tonight and typing it up, the elusive feeling i was trying to capture somehow . . . changed. and you know, maybe that is the point of blogging? to just capture those really thin slivers of perspective in that one teensy, particular moment, before all the other emotions/fears/things you are trying to express take center stage for their moment.