"It's just my job five days a week"
Ok, I'm trying to get into this blog routine. I'm not sure I'm right for it. I write all day. I mean, I write all damn day long. As a creative outlet, blogs are brilliant. An excellent way to yammer on about whatever is worthy of yammering, while you improve your writing skills and give the FBI all the evidence they need. But I write all freakin' day, Monday through Friday. I get up in the morning, start writing ads and emails at 8 am, do that until 5:15 or so, and then go home. When I get there, sitting down and writing more doesn't always sound all that appealing.
The office at home doesn't help. It's too hot, the guys who stripped the wallpaper for us did a halfass job and the walls are a mess, and I really need background noise. TV. I need a TV. I wrote my now outdated and stuffed in the crawlspace unpublished book with a TV on. I need it. There ain't one in the office. Also, it's too hot in there, the desk sucks, the chair is broken and these are all excuses, never mind.
But do I need a creative outlet when I get home from being creative all day? I'm not sure I do. But I'll try again.
Comments
I'm not giving advice. So this isn't advice, okay?
But I would toss into the hat (the one with all the scraps of paper from which you pull your finest idears) that blogging need not subtract from your creativity load. That is, it need not compete with your work or feel like an add-on. Instead (and this is one of the best arguments I've heard about blogging when folks say, "How do you have time for that?"; I didn't come up with this idea), blogging can invigorate your other work, especially if you find a rhythm (tempo, whatever). Ten minutes a day. Ok, fifteen. What if those few minutes spark your other creativities? Maybe?
Or not. You're better than I am at judging whether it's good for you.
Maybe you should get a blogroll. Then your miscellaneous traffic would spike, you'd be in Google's top ten for "Kansas City Barbecue," and the surge of readers would make you feel obligated. That's what I did early on. I've had several hundred visits this month just for hip-hop lyrics, for God's sake.
Posted by: Derek | June 23, 2006 06:56 PM
Well then! Are you just whinning or do you really enjoy doing what you are doing? You have found something that you are really good at! Work or for fun. I as many others really enjoy your BLOG. Stick with it and put a poster up over the wall as we used to. Now listen to some Clash or Ramones(instead of TV) have an ice cold Old Mil. or Old Style and have some FUN!
Posted by: Tony B. aka Da Mailman | June 25, 2006 09:45 AM
I appreciate the thought, Tony, but remember that back in the time we had rock & chick posters and the Clash and Old Milwaukee/Style, I had to take Freshman composition five times because I had no desire to write. Beer and Joe Strummer just aren't my muses.
Thanks to you both, but my problem isn't inspiration, it's motivation. Obviously I like writing - I've been doing it professionally for almost ten years. Which is the problem: I do this all day long, five days a week. I have plenty to write about and loads of inspiration. But after eight or nine hours of writing radio scripts and magazine ads, even 15 minutes of blogging sounds like a chore. Ditto upkeep of this thing (hence the lack of pics, archiving, blogrolling, etc.).
I'm convinced a lot of it is atmosphere, though. The office at home is next on the update list. That might help.
Posted by: paddy | June 26, 2006 12:47 PM
Quit your whining, get a laptop and go write on your boat!!!
If you'd like I can write for you for a while. I can talk about peeing next to Kasey Kahne for hours.
Posted by: brett | July 9, 2006 11:08 AM