On Being Compelled

I swore to myself - as opposed to swearing at everyone else, which is what I usually do - that I was going to maintain at least one blog post per week through the end of the year as a run-up to a major re-design of the blog and my web presence in general, which I plan to launch in the new year. Some weeks, though, it's a little hard to focus. It was a week where everything got swept away.

Now, I could take the common route with blogging, which is to form all my general complaints into some king of entertaining narrative, but complaining seems a bit pointless. It's not like you care, right? You might get a good laugh out of my misery, or maybe just toss me a knowing nod because you've been there, too, but whining is a little too self-indulgent for me. Besides, no one would believe most of my gripes because they sound like a bad stand-up routine. I mean, who would buy that both my toaster and stove broke in the same week? That's like a weird conspiracy against heating elements.

I could do my standard political riff, but politics this past week has mostly been about Sarah Palin and I really think I need more of a challenge than that. Although, I did see a "Sarah 2012" bumper sticker this morning, which actually made me seriously consider the Mayan Prophecies for the first time.

I haven't talked about writing in a while, but considering the amount of student work I'm slogging through, now is probably not the best time to discuss that particular subject. The weird thing about teaching writing is that not only are you bombarded with difficult and troublesome material, the process takes so much time and energy that it salts the earth of your own work. After reading student scripts all day, one of the last things I want to do is sit down and work on my own stuff.

Oh, wait, I've found a point to make today after all, because this is the key difference between professionals and amateurs: we pros are compelled to do it. Even after the long day of mediocre grammar, I still make myself do some real writing. Even with no real plan in mind, I sit down to blog because that's what I committed to. It's not always inspiration and latte, sometimes it's brain sweat and angst. Welcome to my world.