I am writing every day this month as part of a blogging challenge. I am a writer, and I have no problem writing every day. What this challenge motivates me to do is to create something I am willing to post each and every day that is good enough for someone else to read. Writing consumable product every day is very different from writing every day. The later may take the form of working on a manuscript, blogging, writing poetry, and editing earlier writing.
I’ve thought of myself as a writer since at least the 7th grade. I was recognized as being an outstanding young writer by NCTE in High School. I have written and sold pieces for over 20 years. But this challenge of blogging every single day is a tough one. Blogging in the way most people think of it these days has evolved a great deal since the early days of internet logs back in the ’90s. I was there at the beginning, but my blogging became very, very specific and was not intended to build a community, garner comments, or be calm and balanced. From 2004 through 2009 or so my blog, Build Peace on blogspot, was my blog about my peace activism and issues and items I found to be un- or under-reported by corporate media.
About the time I attended my first BlogHer conference in 2007, only a few short weeks after my mother passed away, I began thinking about more “typical” blogging. I had cared for Mom the last few months of her life, in her home of 65 years, in Indiana, far, far away from my home in Tucson. But it was near to Chicago and BlogHer. I took a break from closing up her home and farm to join a couple thousand other women writers at the 3rd annual conference. That was some type of a leap for me. This network helps me take all sorts of leaps of faith, so it is appropriate for me do this June Jump blogging challenge. I’ve been posting every day, but not about the monthly topic, so I thought that today I would cover all of the June, jump-themed prompts thus far in one posting. We’ll see how this goes. There have been five prompts, so far:
What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word jump?
My mind immediately goes to the phrase, “How high?” It is not a phrase/question I would ever say, not any longer. At one time I was a pathological pleaser, but I have overcome this tendency. It took decades to do, but I have overwritten most of the tapes that I memorized as a child who survived medical abuse at the hands of my mother and a very flawed medical system.
Do you need to look before you leap?
I am so analytical that there seems to always be some aspect of a new situation that I’ve previously thought about, and this is very good as I am not really comfortable with actions the first time through them. So, long story longer, observers might think that I am someone who leaps into new and potentially dangerous situations with ease because, for example, I yelled, “Liar” at Donald Rumsfeld in a Senate meeting. That was nothing compared to confronting my mother with how she could have orchestrated so much hurt for me. Donald Rumsfeld was vile, IMO, but not as scary as my mother.
How do you feel about starting new projects?
I actually love starting new projects. New is good. As long as there is some new element I can stick with something, but finishing a project can be a problem if there is no novel aspect remaining or nothing to be learned. If anything I start them too easily, and too often, and then get all discombobulated with distraction when my attention is divided between too many competing demands.
What is something you’d like to jump into if you had more time/money? I would jump into my business full tilt boogie and become an employer. I would hire assistants if I had more money so that there was a person to help at home and another to help as an assistant with my book, my community exchange classifieds (on ice at the moment) and my content business. But there is an equal chance that if I had the time and money I would hole up in a cottage in the Hebrides and write until I was done writing… and that could be a few weeks to a year.
What is something you recently jumped into?
I jumped into building my Done Nesting site as a community blogging vehicle and a place to discuss some of the Late Boomer topics I’d like to cover, along with some local and women’s economics topics too. That is a relatively small jump and nothing at all like jumping off the Chrysler Building and traveling back to the year 1969, which if truth be told is why this post is as disjointed as it is. My hubby and I snuck off to a MIB III matinee today after a medical appointment from which I had to drive my husband.
Links added tomorrow a.m. if I fall asleep before finishing them tonight.
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