blogicide

Yes, I almost committed blogicide. I almost pulled the cyberplug on this blog. The feeling of "the world has passed me by, everybody knows more about social media than I do, what's the point?" put up a big fat wall between me and the keyboard. It wasn't writer's block. It was writer's despair. Every time I don't know what to do I freeze. Then I figure I must be better at something else. Something must be more fluid and supply natural motivation. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly... I... have no idea what my medium is. I know it's words... somewhere.

Not that I'm naive enough to believe that everything in life should be fun or easy. But I particularly like things I'm good at. For exercise, a lot of my friends do spinning. Spinning is my idea of enduring a root canal while moving my legs. But rowing, on the otherhand, kicks my butt but I love it. I'm good at it, it feels natural and I don't feel like a big loser when I do it.

This weekend my son helped me redesign my blog. I'm not sure it's... the one, but I learned a lot. Like if I have to scroll through 307 pages of wallpaper for my blog I will not make it past page 30. My first attempt at design was alarming. It had dots and stripes and bold colors that jumped out at you like a clown with a sledgehammer. But it was nice to see things happen with the click of a mouse or by typing in a code. To me this process is like watching Science Fiction Theatre and to him it's like a dolphin playing in the water. He does it all at the speed of light. Like the joy I used to feel playing in the ocean -- my son gets designing websites. Then he shows me how to do the things he has just done and I cry. I do. I admit it right here. It is so frustrating. If he shows me and then I can't repeat the process I want to get a bag of Cheetos and find an "I Love Lucy" rerun and bathe in my "loserness." It's like being a grownup and learning how to ski. It's just easier to learn if you're a fearless toddler. My son is like a sleek elegant slalom racer, moving quickly, quietly, painlessly down the mountain. I am among the spectators in awe. 

Today I needed to put a classified ad on the internet. I needed to create a gmail account for email. And I did it. I created it by myself and I even forwarded it to my existing account. These are baby steps but it felt like I was finally going somewhere. 

I know I have to learn a certain amount of this information to exist in the future. But if I want to compete in the future I have to be as good or better. And even if I closed the door for the next six months and pretended I don't have a life that involves responsibilities I couldn't be as natural and fluid as my son. I am a writer. A technophobe writer. I need to write the words and try to find a place for the words in this strange new world. And this feels like a fulltime occupation. And it doesn't pay well. Okay, it doesn't pay at all. So instead of practicing at doing a blog... I either need to find a blog topic (yes, "a girl starting a blog" is a topic but it's pretty general) and write the hell out of it... or not.

I'm being honest when I say, I don't know what direction to head my boat currently. Will the internet take me anywhere? Or am I just looking for a smooth ride on uncharted waters?

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