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July 14, 2006
Feelings of Inadequecy
So, I’m clearly unmotivated to update this blog regularly. Actually, that’s not true. I’m very motivated to update this blog regularly and I’ve often had small snippets of thought that I nearly posted. But none of those musings have become permanent additions to my little slice of the internet. I think, perhaps, there are two culprits at fault for my negligence.
Firstly, I am a little afraid that something I say in this blog might, one day, come back to bite me…Like right there, were I nearly said “to bite me in-a-certain-part-of-my-anatomy…” but then I deleted it because I felt using that certain word might be in poor form.
I know that makes me a little paranoid. Many of you faithful, and yet non-existent, readers are probably thinking “Uh, no one even reads your trite little blog, so what makes you think you’re so special that anyone would care?” Well, I don’t think I’m so special that anyone would care…yet. But I do want to be someone someday. I have ambitions, like running for President, or Senator, or School Board Representative. I intend to be a teacher when all this university business is said and done. And in the course of these pursuits, I don’t want some young protégée to stumble upon my Free-er Phases of Life and subsequently question my integrity because I ‘used a swear.’
Secondly, after my moving introduction to this site, I’m terrified that any follow up would disappoint my faithful, yet non-existent, readers. I’m not, generally, eloquent in my writing. Moreover, when I strive to be so, I tend to become dishonest. Really, my writing is like a 13 year old girl in a leather mini-skirt and wedge heels. She tries to act all grown up, but in doing so she betrays her truth. Suddenly there is melodrama and waxing philosophic and none of it is very….real.
I think a certain contemporary pundit would call that “Truthiness,” and that’s sort of what it is. I often write what “feels” right, what “feels” significant and meaningful, but not necessarily what is the meat-and-bones truth of the matter.
I certainly don’t intend to be dishonest, any more than the integrity touting reporters of Fox News do. But I think it happens sometimes, when one is trying to explain a truth that is so…heavy. Somehow, regular words don’t seem to do it justice…and it becomes like a Young and the Restless love scene. One throws in fancy diction, theatrical background music and dramatic pause, rather than just allowing sincerity to lay bare the truth.
That is my confession. In many ways one fault is at the source of the other. Once you begin to censor yourself, you have already abandoned reality and you must install fantasy to compensate for the void. I’m not trying to make excuses, of course. I just want to be honest. These are my shortcomings and they will inevitably play out in this blog as much as I try to control them. I say inevitably because they are part of me, my desire to make a difference, my desire to live a powerful life, my desire to know myself and understand the world, these are all qualities within me that make this blog the exploration that it is.
So, I have given you my disclaimer. Although, in truth, it’s more for myself than for anyone else. I hope that I may take this ‘warning’ as a license to occasionally succumb to my faults. I can now blog freely without constant concern for fixing these problems but rather embracing the reality of their existence.
Perhaps tomorrow I can get down to the real business of this blog, my entry will probably lack the harsher elements of my personality, and it may instead contain some cliché melo-drama…but at least it will be there.
Posted by vcbailey at July 14, 2006 02:54 PM