I am pissed. At myself. I can't post anything eloquent tonight, so if you are looking for velveteen, move along. This is some threadbare.
The best laid plans...
That's a line I just wrote on a post over at my eMoms at Home channel, eBay Selling for eParents. People, I am nothing if not full of plans.
I am also full of sh*t.
I had a beautiful post for today, loaded with pictures from my Mary garden, which I finally finished last weekend. Unfortunately, I am not in the mood to write about flowers or mothers of saviors.
Have you noticed that I've been a little scattered lately? Lost my focus? Stretched too thin?
Yeah, ya think?
Maguire is working 7 days a week, 12 hour weekdays and 8 hour weekends. The holidays are coming and I am swamped under eBay work that is yet to be finished. Hell, yet to be started. Pants's school seems to have some kind of activity every week for which I have to deliver the equivalent of a Rose Bowl Parade float. And Goose is a 16 month old little boy. Need I say more?
I am here, with only 24 hours in a day and what often feels like 24 people pulling me in 24 directions. Something has got to give.
One of my favorite readers and bloggers gently mentioned to me today that I haven't written a post of any substance in a couple of weeks. Says I have lost my focus. Ouch. Damn... Oh, and also, this is not news to me.
Just today, I was telling myself that I wouldn't post any more "blogging about blogging" posts for the foreseeable future. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of exploring the ins and outs of it. That's not why I blog. I don't do it for money. I don't do it for numbers. I do it because journaling is just part of me. It always has been. The difference is that now I let you read it.
But it is so damn easy to get caught up in the peripherals. Social networking. Promotion. Statistics. It never ends. You could so easily make blogging a full time job, given that you don't actually want to get paid any real money.
The community aspect of it is a little bit stickier. The line between community and networking is difficult to define.
But here is the bottom line: I don't have time for all of this. I just want to write. Write whatever the hell I want. For me. For you. Here.
The whole idea behind the deconstruction and revamping of TopBlogMag, which I am currently in the middle of-- with the ruins of it strewn all over the internet, is to reward bloggers for keeping their best stuff on their own blogs. For not farming out our strongest words for the sake of traffic or cash or popularity. For not saving the good stuff for a "better" venue.
Listen up all you GoBloMeMoFo guest bloggers: Don't bring your best stuff over here! I don't want to see it grace the pages of Velveteen Mind! Keep it for yourselves! Keep it for your readers!
My readers will do just fine with some half-ass stuff. Just make it good enough to entice them to click on your link and find the really solid stuff on your own blog.
And now my readers are asking, "Wait? What about us? If Megan is giving us crap and the GoBloMeMoFo bloggers are giving us crap, what the hell are we doing here?"
I ask myself the same question.
I'm done posting non-personal stuff for the sake of taking care of "blogging business." I used to only blog about blogging on the weekends, when I would clear out my memes and blog bling backlogs. Then I got overwhelmed by, well, life, and couldn't hold a thought long enough to do anything other than point you in other directions. Enough already.
And those guest bloggers? They are here just to have some fun. Save a bunny. Blow off some steam. Play. Click on their damn links and see what they are all about. I invited them here for a reason. They are worth it.
I have a lot I want to write about, but I can't seem to break through the walls my obligations elsewhere seem to have put up around my blog. I sit down to write here and all I can think is that I need to be fulfilling a responsibility elsewhere.
To hell with that.
I want to show you pictures from Halloween. I looked hot. I want to show you pictures of my efforts at being Martha Stewart for Pants's school events. I want to show you my beautiful Mary garden that I have been mentioning since I began this blog, but never seemed to finish.
I want to write about how Pants just got his first big guy bike. How Goose has skipped being a baby and is nothing but a big boy. How my boys are so different from each other and yet compliment each other perfectly. I want to tell you how proud I am of Maguire's new job and how exhausted I am from being alone all the time.
And I want to get excited about going to New York.
I want to simplify. Life is complicated enough. I can't make everyone happy all of the time. It's time I start disappointing some people other than myself.
************
Please share this post on or so others can find us, too.
New Here? Subscribe to Velveteen Mind or have it delivered via email so you can continue to revel with me!