On non-posting

I seem to have an inability to finish blog posts these days.

My dashboard in Blogger has 5 drafts from the last month or so, ones I've not been able to finish. One was on the tsunami, another was on working all the time, and another was about the United Nations workers murdered last week by an angry mob in Afghanistan who were enraged after people in Florida sentenced a copy of the Koran

Because I did not finish them for the intended audience, they don't seem to have as much resonance. I did not commit them to the public eye because they were not complete thoughts and for whatever reason I decided to stop.

Usually I stop because I write a little too personal and I realize I can't send it to the general public. Perhaps I'm saying something that might get misinterpreted. Most days I feel like there's something grand I should be writing, but I don't get very far with it because something else has to be attended to in a more immediate fashion.

I often dream up gimmicks I could do to train myself to have a public voice here in this little space. For instance, I've thought about trying to get by on only $100 in gas this April. So far I've put $20 in, and I need to fill up again. I'd like to find a way to drive less and to see how else I might get around. This might push me to get a bike, for instance. That would be interesting to write about, right?

Or, I could try to document my attempts to write songs, which seems to be happening even if I don't take it too terribly seriously. But, I'm a bit too timid to put myself out there, and I'm not going to write about my ambivalence.

I'm likely going to write about gardening, which I'm trying again this year. My dining room area has been transformed into an impromptu nursery, as I'm trying to grow vegetables again. Yesterday, I took time off from running to spend an hour digging a second plot. I don't know what I'm doing, but this year I'm going to enlist help from friends to get suggestions and tips. I will open up to what they know because I want to learn new skills.

I'd like to do the same with other musicians, because I'm definitely not growing without other people's input. I would like to find a group I could play with, but that would mean a level of commitment I just don't have at the moment.

And that's okay. I'm content to play improvised stuff, and to fumble along as I learn more and more about song structure. I think I've improved, though I still have problems trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together.

One of the blog posts was about the fragmentation I feel, with all that's going on in my life. I tend to work as much as I can, but every spring I start to feel like that's the worst possible way to live. Yet, there's so much to pay for these days.

I wish I had completed the one about the tsunami, but I don't feel comfortable talking about that sort of thing. I have this idea of what I want to say so vividly in my head that I don't want to muck it up with language.

These days I've been feeling like everything is about to change again. Our system of politics is going to continue to evolve into a much more volatile struggle between two competing visions. I'm not paying enough attention, but I feel it's necessary to begin doing so.

I guess I could also write about the tavern, a place where I've begun to have fascinating discussions with people about the world. I'd like to think we're living up the vision I've had for CST, which is to provide a spot where people can have great beer while having a nice conversation. But, to write about the tavern and its occupants would betray a certain level of confidence I have in them. The last thing I ever want to do is write about people I know in a public forum.

At the bottom of it all, I'd love to write fiction, to figure out how to deal with ideas in stories. I have this vague sadness in me a lot, and it always seems that I can keep that sadness at bay if I just write things down.

So, in the spirit of moving things along, I'm going to hit send, without an edit, so there might be a few things off here and there. But, so what? Who said it had to be perfect?