Look For Me In That New Category At This Year's Bloggies

I have got to be the world's worst blogger.

(And, honestly, I have never paid any attention to the Bloggies, so I don't even know if that would be a new category.)

I say this not because I don't update as often as I might, or because I am less than forthcoming, or even as a matter of popularity (I never, but never check my stats), but as a matter of pure practicality. I am a rotten blogger. I'm just not cut out for this whole blogging thing, really.

What comes next is probably going to sound egotistical as hell, and I want to assure you, all of you, I don't mean it that way at all.

I have never been a journal keeper, for two basic reasons: the first attempts I made at journal keeping were ill-conceived parts of bad lesson plans by well meaning teachers, which came off, to me, as punative. And since I just didn't feel like writing down all my problems in a nice, neat catalogue rather than dealing with them moment to moment (as was my preference), I often made the entries all up at the last minute. I often went so far as to use different color inks and such like to make good the dodge, for which I felt like a cheat and a mook. (Cheat because I was cheating, mook because I knew, really, that I wasn't fooling anybody.) One of the teachers said "Oh, well why didn't you just tell me you didn't want to do it?" (She'd have assigned alternate work.) One said it was mandatory the we keep current journal entries, chastised me in front of the class, and gave me an A on the journal component of the course at the end of the year.

The other thing was that there was that whole writing-is-therapy movement in the 70's, part of which I accepted, part of which bugged the crap out of me. Writing is theraputic for you? Helps you solve your problems, does it? Fine. Do I have to read it? Why me!? I'd really rather not.

That DOES NOT GO FOR nor does it REFLECT ANY OF THE BLOGGERS I READ. Just so we're clear on that. I wouldn't be reading (much less commenting) if I didn't care or wasn't interested. That means to reflect the mass-market self-help trade of the 70's. Which at times seemed to actively discourage creativity and encourage self-indulgence. Which to me defeated the whole purpose of writing. Perhaps that's all I ought to say about that.

But also, I think, I am not made for airing my grievances on the internet. In the first place, I don't really have alot of them, and secondly, what there are the Wife hears about first. So I think my entries come off as bland or impersonal. I get the sense that, where other bloggers seem to have thier own, well-established online persona, I come off more like a series of billboards along the information highway.

This is not to say I am going to stop doing it. No, not at all. It's mainly by way of frustration. We left the cameras at the Wife's folks' place Christmas day, and since I have not been able to post any pictures of food, so I have been reflecting on my blogging abilities in general. So here's an old picture of my 12 string acoustic guitars, each with his/her own personal nylon mesh strap.