November 13, 2006
Out of the closet
Today has been a revelation. I told my online friends that I have a blog. When I was writing my previous posts, no one knew. It wasn’t locked and private, but no one knew. They could have found it before I made the big announcement, but they didn’t know to go looking. They’ve tried diligently to recruit me into the blogging world. They’ve heard my protestations, my very valid reasons for not joining in their spiffy little hobby of spilling their guts right there in public for all to see. I even had the audacity to tell one of them that it takes an enormous ego to think that anyone other than their family and closest friends would have an interest in their blather (sorry, Em.) That was a silly comment, considering that I check each of their blogs daily (actually, several times each day,) and that I follow the links they post, which has led me to becoming addicted to blogs by people I don’t even know. One might even think that that was rather two-faced of me (and that one would be right.)
If you scroll all the way down to my original post, you’ll see why I finally decided to join in. Or I could make it easy for you:
Starting tomorrow I’ll try to do one thing each day to address my clutter problem. I don’t know what I’ll blog about, except for this: I will report plans and progress on the clutter problem here. No, that’s not all I’ll be writing about. Whether I’m an interesting person is an unknown in the blogging world. What’s not in question is that there are interesting things and interesting people in my life, and that I live in an interesting place in these interesting times. So I’ll share some of that with you. And with each post I’ll tell you about a task, sometimes large, sometimes small, that will move me towards digging myself out from under the stuff. I’ll try to be honest in reporting failures - and there will be failures. My fear of public humiliation will be a driving factor in keeping me on track.
The reason that I started this blog is the same reason that decided I could, would, should share it. Telling me what a bad job I was doing wasn’t cutting it. I already knew that. I need the people who know me to start prodding. I need them to tell me that, no matter how valid, my excuses are still just excuses. If I’m going to crawl out from under the clutter, I need to quit validating reasons not to do it. I need to actually expose myself to my friends and to the public humiliation I fear.
So I told them. The world did not split asunder. Sure, there was laughing and one “I told you so.” That’s the kind of folks they are. It’s one of their endearing qualities that they could not pretend there wasn’t a little smugness. Then, they came here. They read. There was much rejoicing. Our little private message board slid right into a celebratory mood. They told me I done good. They gave me a proper welcome into the blogging world: they linked me. Strangers know that I exist and may start wandering in to see what goes on in skeet’s world. The comment button has now been activated, because there might actually be someone out there who wants to use it.
What an ego trip!
Progress report: You’re kidding, right? I’ll step down off of my cloud and get back to work tomorrow. Yeah … tomorrow.
