Confessions of a Failed Blogger

<p style=”clear: both”>I hate the last thing I put up, worry I sound oblique or coy and that wasn’t what I meant at all, at all. And hate that the hating of it draws attention to it, that to take it down would make it look like more than it was.

Yesterday I had a morning when every word I wrote seemed to come springing gleefully from my fingertips. This morning the words are leaden and have to be squeezed out painfully, and I am angry. I sort papers in my office, read from the book I found on Amazon that seems to be about exactly what I meant to write about, has a title much like my own beloved title, only it’s BETTER, so much better. I scoop up the printed up copies of poems written by the one friend with whom I would like to discuss this, the friend whose absence leaves a specifically shaped hole disconcertingly close to the center of my life, and I shove these poems in their own obscure folder so I don’t have to confront evidence of faltering friendship.

I am a terrible friend. I think of people at 10:30 at night when it’s much too late to call. During the day, if the kids aren’t here, time is too precious for the phone. If the kids are here, the phone is also nearly impossible. Our schedule teeters on the edge of overcommitted and I hate the feeling of letting anyone down. Suspect I will let everyone down. The boys seem to be endlessly tugging, it becomes impossible to walk a straight line for their tugging on my clothes, on my attention, on my tenuous grasp of my life.

I contemplate the failure of the blog, which is what it seems, starkly, this morning. A blogger I admire writes of needing not to be confined to genre and the blog helping against that. But I discern genres of blog, the upbeat and (okay, not the successful ones, but this is my mood this morning, I recognize my filters even if they are cognitively impenetrable, I cannot correct for them) self-congratulatory, the ones I think are supposed to be uplifting or inspiring. The blogs about parenthood which start out cute and sweet and seem somehow, when you follow them over the course of a few years, to either grow silent on the subject of the offspring or to become, slowly, quietly, a little darker. The anonymous and rending confessional blogs, with their faith in their own anonymity or else their indifference to the pain that their words always leave potentially in their wake. I cling to discretion, but I am not always sure that is enough.

I keep thinking that if the whole blogging project has given me anything, it’s this greater sureness of the right to feel what it is I feel, to close that fissure “should feel” “do feel” — only that sense of discretion, the awareness of where words hurt others, of what is made permanent by being electronic, non-physical, searchable, versus what belongs consigned to paper, to what only I will have access to — is grounds for examination, that discretion is not shame, is not invalidation, is not censorship, nor taboo. That there is power in not speaking as well as in speaking, if it’s consciously decided.

I don’t think anyone is reading anymore. And I would think that was a relief, only it isn’t.

And yet, I don’t let the blog die. Even when I don’t have a lot to say, I need it to still be here for me, a place to explore a thought if the thoughts ever come back again.

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And: all this written (yesterday) but I thought I’d better wait to hit publish, and an hour or two later I get an official rejection from the first magazine I submitted something to. So I imagine I get to just wallow a little bit in the fail.

Only.

I am apparently cursed with a buoyant nature. One that notes “Wow, that first rejection out of the way, never have to go through that particular one again! And it didn’t break you, so maybe you’re not completely ill-suited to this.” and also “Hey, you know what that rejection means, right? It means I sent something out!” One that says, “yes, well, we got the book with the title just like mine and it’s really, I mean really, good, but it’s not at all what I was going to write, and it’s not like I stop writing now.” One that notes: “Oh,right, you’ve gotten in forty or fifty pages with a few rewritten passages after consulting with Sarah, and you’ve encountered the monsters that reside fifty pages in… But this is the fourth thing you’ve written to this point, and you’ve encountered the same monsters at about the same point every time, which, guess what? That’s part of the process for you. And the first two times you pushed through and it had its own satisfactions, but the third time you made up some excuses for putting that project to the side, and you’re still recovering from that decision, so guess what? You’re going to push through this time, you’ve given yourself the support networks you need to do that, and you understand the stakes, and, yeah, wow, it’s sort of cool to have the experience to know that this is how it works and not completely freaked out.” It’s rather like the third birth I experienced, Søren’s birth, after two births and one miscarriage. I relaxed, a little more, and surprised myself by being really good at it, trusting myself, and knowing what parts of it really weren’t up to me, but also trusting the process. That third time, I wasn’t taking anything for granted, but it wasn’t like the first time when I just waltzed in thinking all I needed was the right attitude and it would be easy, or the second time when I was slightly paralyzed knowing the stakes and that it would be hard. It was the third birth when I sort of fell in love with the process, with the surrender, with my midwife, with allowing it to be what it was.

My buoyant nature notes that just when I’m flailing and feeling discouraged a friend who lives a few blocks away calls up and says she is stressed and needs girlfriend time and we both just have time for a cup of coffee but we make each other laugh and she inspires me, and the wallowing in fail is just impossible around her.

My stupid buoyant nature and inability to wallow in a good day of failure, has to go and be grateful that I could confess how awful yesterday was to Raven and so then he let me sleep late when insomnia wormed its way in and out of my night, with difficulty falling asleep, waking in the middle of the night, waking early, and only starting to feel comfortable with sleep when the alarm goes of this morning, he said “I’ll take the boys to school, you sleep,” and it is a gift. Then he texts a supportive message and then asks how he can be more supportive. And this didn’t just happen: this is the result of us working really, really hard at teaching each other what we need from each other.

I break from writing and call a friend who is going through a hard time figuring out how to go forward, affirming this is more important than blogging, the other writing, or finding time to exercise before I must go pick up Rainer and a friend from school. It turns out that I am a person to whom all of these different parts of my life are important, and I need the reality outside my head as well as quiet time to try and put words into the order I need them in.

If this is failure, maybe I shouldn’t whine too loudly.

I get reminded by something to go and re-read This is Water and it doesn’t matter that I have read it multiple times already, listened to it, it’s the reminder I need that I get to choose, that thoughts matter. The buoyant nature or positive attitude or whatever you want to call it isn’t a matter of simple-mindedness or uncritical thinking and blindness, that it’s something chosen and worked for and it makes it very difficult to wallow in failure. And, man, if anybody is still reading? And put off by any aspect of this that sounds even remotely self-congratulatory? Can I just say? I’m as surprised by this as anybody, and I leave the angry and bitter first part of this in because I need to keep the evidence for myself that it gets darker and then it gets lighter.