The Real

Hullo peeps,

Sorry (again) for the unplanned sabbatical. I'd love a kick ass excuse (I was with my cousin in Alaska HUNTING WOLVERINES!) but mostly I've just been crazy busy and disenchanted with the blogosphere, social media, the Internet, my writing, myself, life - okay, basically everything. I have plenty of things to write about and twenty four saved drafts to prove it. But I just plain hate everything that flows forth from my fingertips < like that. WTF?

I'll get a sudden spark of inspiration, drop everything, write furiously for as long as possible (when the littles are awake, this means 5 minutes tops), then reread it with a permanent frowny face and hack it to shreds until I'm back to a blank page. This post, for instance, has been completely rewritten seven times. Were the first six editions bad? No. Maybe? Yes? I don't know.

Maybe this long streak of writer's block (is that what this is?) is just nature's way of forcing me to accept it's okay to not edit my writing to death, that doing something "fine" is better than not doing it at all and that doing it "perfectly" is IMPOSSIBLE. Do you hear me, inner self? I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E. It's not like I have any control over how I'll be perceived by others, anyway - from my word choices and use of grammar on this blog to the clothes I wear to the grocery store to the state of my house. I just feel like I've been putting so much effort into "editing" every aspect of my life that I've forgotten how to be real. Truthfully, I'd rather not be real. Real doesn't come with a delete button or Instagram filters. Real is feeling overwhelmed and disillusioned and wishing things weren't.

Real sucks sometimes. And mixed in with all that sucky-ness are the moments that make life worthwhile - things you can't fabricate with pretty words or special effects.

Without it, life is big void of pointless nothing, so I guess I should figure out how to suck it up.

I'll start by hitting Publish without re-writing this for the eighth time.

Ready, go.