Catherine Egan's Blog, page 9
November 3, 2012
Blog
Dear Blog,
Hello. I am starting a Blog. I’m not sure how to do this, or why, but am hoping the how and the why will become clear as I go. If not, I can just abandon you, Blog, like an unwanted piece of furniture, not useful or stylish after all. I’ll leave you on the curb with a sign saying “Free Blog. Help Yourself,” and decide that what my writing life actually needs is less clutter, more open space.
Part of the why, though, is that I hardly have time to think any thoughts. I used to think about things, and I wrote a lot of things down in a lot of notebooks, completing thoughts, or at least continuing them. Then life started speeding up, and it felt like I was going at a light jog all the time just to keep up with the days and the nights. I’d have a thought, and I’d tell myself, I’ll think about that some more later, but I rarely did come back to any of those thoughts because of the way the days and the nights kept on moving faster and faster and I had to keep moving faster and faster too, to keep up, and there would be other thoughts whizzing by all the time and I would be trying to catch hold of those, too, to think about them later. When the days and the nights started to blur into weeks and my jog became a mad scramble, I stopped thinking thoughts altogether. I can’t remember the last time I had A Thought that wasn’t something like, oh hell what is the matter with me I forgot to turn the oven on and that lasagna has just been sitting in there for an hour doing nothing.
Still, somehow, with the laundry and dishes piling up around me, with the dust in the corners and out of the corners and the unanswered e-mails and the unreturned phonecalls and the unmade breakfast and the boys bringing me books and crayons and the outside beckoning and the milk going bad on the counter, still, every day I grab hold of time and give it a good hard smack to slow it down just long enough for me to write something, and to read something.
So, that’s good, I guess. I should be nicer to time, maybe it would be nicer to me, but I’m afraid to be the first to attempt a more peaceful relationship for fear it would knock me flat and I would never catch up with it again. So: grab, and SMACK, and write, and read. But think about what I’m writing? Or what I’m reading? Have some thoughts and follow them somewhere, possibly even to a conclusion? Not so much.
Which is the why, or some of the why, of this blog. Maybe a blog habit will enable me to have, and continue to have, and perhaps even complete, some thoughts about what (and why) I’m writing, and what I’m reading, and maybe even what I think I’m doing with my life and what I should be doing with my life, but I don’t want to get too ambitious. Then again, maybe a blog will just become one more thing I have to do, and I’ll have even less time to think any thoughts.
We’ll see. Won’t we?
Kisses,
Catherine
Hello. I am starting a Blog. I’m not sure how to do this, or why, but am hoping the how and the why will become clear as I go. If not, I can just abandon you, Blog, like an unwanted piece of furniture, not useful or stylish after all. I’ll leave you on the curb with a sign saying “Free Blog. Help Yourself,” and decide that what my writing life actually needs is less clutter, more open space.
Part of the why, though, is that I hardly have time to think any thoughts. I used to think about things, and I wrote a lot of things down in a lot of notebooks, completing thoughts, or at least continuing them. Then life started speeding up, and it felt like I was going at a light jog all the time just to keep up with the days and the nights. I’d have a thought, and I’d tell myself, I’ll think about that some more later, but I rarely did come back to any of those thoughts because of the way the days and the nights kept on moving faster and faster and I had to keep moving faster and faster too, to keep up, and there would be other thoughts whizzing by all the time and I would be trying to catch hold of those, too, to think about them later. When the days and the nights started to blur into weeks and my jog became a mad scramble, I stopped thinking thoughts altogether. I can’t remember the last time I had A Thought that wasn’t something like, oh hell what is the matter with me I forgot to turn the oven on and that lasagna has just been sitting in there for an hour doing nothing.
Still, somehow, with the laundry and dishes piling up around me, with the dust in the corners and out of the corners and the unanswered e-mails and the unreturned phonecalls and the unmade breakfast and the boys bringing me books and crayons and the outside beckoning and the milk going bad on the counter, still, every day I grab hold of time and give it a good hard smack to slow it down just long enough for me to write something, and to read something.
So, that’s good, I guess. I should be nicer to time, maybe it would be nicer to me, but I’m afraid to be the first to attempt a more peaceful relationship for fear it would knock me flat and I would never catch up with it again. So: grab, and SMACK, and write, and read. But think about what I’m writing? Or what I’m reading? Have some thoughts and follow them somewhere, possibly even to a conclusion? Not so much.
Which is the why, or some of the why, of this blog. Maybe a blog habit will enable me to have, and continue to have, and perhaps even complete, some thoughts about what (and why) I’m writing, and what I’m reading, and maybe even what I think I’m doing with my life and what I should be doing with my life, but I don’t want to get too ambitious. Then again, maybe a blog will just become one more thing I have to do, and I’ll have even less time to think any thoughts.
We’ll see. Won’t we?
Kisses,
Catherine
