I think what I’ve missed the most about blogging is my rambling nonsense. Seriously, that was my favourite part about blogging in the past, when I blogged entirely for myself without giving a damn about what anybody else thought. If my blogging has felt a bit forced, cold and unnatural lately, I think it’s mostly because that’s how I’ve been feeling. I haven’t felt the warm tingly rush of simply writing for the sake of writing, to sort of let my mind go. Kind of like the mental equivalent of physical activity.

As usual, I have a habit of getting terribly excited about all sorts of little things. I have been living a lie for far too long- by that I mean to say that I haven’t been writing with my true voice, I haven’t been comfortable, I haven’t been free. And we all know what happens when you reach that stage, be it as an artist, or in a relationship, or whatever. We need to be comfortable above all else. Which is a strange thing to say, right? Because we need to leave our comfort zones to grow. So there’s a contradiction in there somewhere. We need to leave our comfort zones and then find a compromise such that we’re comfortable- and then once we get a little bit too comfortable we need to leave the newly-expanded comfort zone again. This is part of a deeper wisdom of what I like to describe as phase-cycling, which I want to talk about separately.

I have a fundamental problem with the way the blogging universe appears to work. It’s annoying. It’s simplistic, and it’s kind of exploitative. Here’s a wonderful comment I read on another blog-

Man has job, but doesn’t like his job. Man reads a great blog about quitting you job and pursuing your dreams. Man buys one ebook about pursuing dreams. Man buys second ebook about writing ebooks about pursuing dreams. Man buys third ebook about writing ebooks about writing ebooks.

Man quits job and starts a website about quitting your job and pursuing your dreams. Man’s only source of income is writing ebooks about quitting your job and pursuing your dreams. Man doesn’t do anything else but this. Just writing a blog about “simplicity”, “the power of social media”, and how “You too can quit your job and write ebooks about writing ebooks!” Rinse, repeat.

That’s not really what I want to become, that’s not what I want to be a part of. I can’t help but feel that there’s no real soul in that, no sincerity, no honesty- and it feels frighteningly like a cult, and that freaks the shit out of me. It reminds me of disturbing experiences with organized religion and MLM freaks.

I think I’m going to stop taking the blogosphere’s advice for a while now with regards to what it means to be a successful blogger. It’s too much. I don’t agree with it. It’s not me. I’m going to be myself for now. I’m sure there are valid lessons in all that I have read and studied so far, but I’m sure too that rules are meant to be broken. I have faith that there are readers out there who aren’t looking for prescriptive, cookie-cutter answers to their problems that are listed out in 7 easy steps.

Writing is just plain carthartic for me, okay? If you think I’m long-winded and difficult to read, I apologize, and I will try to do better in the future. But for the time being I think it’s really important to me that I simply write as I feel like writing, about things that I feel like writing. I’m sick of all this categorizing and planning and structuring. I mean, it serves a purpose, but I feel like I’ve taken it a step too far, to the point where I’ve lost a sense of what it’s like to simply tune out from the world and write with reckless abandon.

Why am I doing this? Because I have to, damn it, and I’m going to! I don’t have to explain myself. If this blog doesn’t make sense to you, and it doesn’t serve a purpose to you, you can always leave. I’m sorry for having wasted your time.

But for those of you who are still with me, I treasure you. You mean more to me than a thousand random hits from strangers who skim through my bolded points and move on without really putting any thought into them. I choose depth over reach, I choose intensity over extensiveness, I choose you over them.

I’m probably contradicting myself in a hundred places right now. But you understand. Thank you.