You may recall that a few months ago I talked about having challenged myself to write 50 blog posts this my 50^th year before I actually turn 50.

If you look at the number of posts I’ve written since then, you will quickly see that I am quite a distance from achieving that goal and there is less than half a year left before I hit the big 5-0.

It’s the oddest thing, really. I quite enjoy writing – or I wouldn’t do it. I enjoy so many things about it, including the physical act itself – whether with a keyboard or an actual pen to paper – and the fact that it fulfills me in some way. Yet I don’t do it that much.

So why don’t I do it more? Why do I choose instead, more often than not, to just flake out in front of the TV and zone out?

It’s not like I even have to choose between writing and watching TV. I am, at this very moment, for instance, sitting on my couch AND watching TV! (Bohemian Rhapsody, to be specific…loving the music, btw.) And still…I don’t write.

I’ve mulled this over quite a bit over the years. I think that part of it might be because I write in my journal (the pen to paper thing) two or three times a week. Not that what I write in there is particularly interesting or anything, but maybe it’s enough to feed the desire.

Another contributor – perhaps even the biggest – is that I struggle with the idea that anything I write could possibly be of any interest to anyone else. It’s kind of bizarre to me that it would be. Even though I frequently have had people tell me I should write more, I suppose a part of me doesn’t believe it. And, along a similar vein, even when I want to write, I think I have to find some amazingly gripping topic to write about that would be worth taking up however many bits and bytes of space these flittering characters take up in the cyberverse.

Given how much (subjectively speaking) crap there already is online, I really shouldn’t worry too much about that, should I? Plus, as the old adage goes: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There’s an audience for pretty much anything and everything on here.

Finally, I should admit that I really don’t like to practice anything. If I’m interested in doing something, I just want to automatically be at least decent at it. Years ago, for another birthday milestone, I had challenged myself to learn to paint watercolours. I signed up for a course and was absolutely flabbergasted to find out that I first needed to learn to draw. WHAT?!?! I didn’t want to bother with all that. I wanted to dip a brush in water and paint and come up with something that looked passably like what it was supposed to be. Without any of the other fiddle faddle. (I did, dutifully, however, do a drawing session with an artist once, and I bought a book with drawing lessons in it – which I still tinker with every now and then – so it’s not like I’ve just totally thrown in the towel on that. I just impatiently wanted to immediately do watercolour sans practice.)

I guess, then, that I shouldn’t be too surprised that I don’t jump to the computer more often. I’ve criticized myself out of it before I even get one word written.

Well, I’ve decided to cast all that to the wind. I really, really, really want to achieve that goal this year and in order to do so, I’m going to need to stop with the constant self-editing and just write. Write, write, write, write, write.

That means some posts are going to be interesting, some will be OK and others (probably this one, for example) will be mediocre at best. I have about 21 weeks to write 40 posts. Eek! Wait – this counts as one, so 39 posts left!

I apologize, then, in advance for some of what is bound to be posted here over the next few months! And thank you, too, for bearing with me and (perhaps?) cheering me along on the sidelines… 🙂