Update to my readers

I trust that most of the regular readers I had developed over the first couple of months of relatively regular posting (the ten of you) will have abandoned me by now as I have pretty much stopped posting except for the occasional shared article with brief commentary. (Number one rule of success as a blogger is, apparently, consistency.)

I am not sure of the future of the Jenaissance. I don’t love blogging. The act of writing I love. And having people read and sometimes comment is very satisfying. But the requisite online-ness and more regular contact with theinternet (a deep deep hole that can pull me in and, truth be told, really wreck my day) is something that I have serious trouble balancing. A day on theinternet is a day with tears. Literally, I went online today and – voila! – i cried. Children with sick mothers, sick children, soldiers and candles, animals befriending one another or saving people from fires. I should be more selective, and I have gotten much, much better about clickbait (unless it is about Taylor Swift, who knew she was such an adorable toddler?). But, for me, resistance seems futile if I allow myself, for one moment, to step into the world of Facebook, Twitter, Medium (which inevitably lead me to HuffPost, the NYT, Upworthy, etc). I want connection and inspiration, but I mostly just end up slightly depressed from my expeditions into the modern world and lacking in motivation to do the things I believe will move my life in a positive direction.

So I’m not sure what to do about that. I have lots of blog ideas, but in addition to the problem of going online, I don’t love what happens to me when I try to build a blog. Checking stats, looking at traffic numbers, I get a little, obsessive?  I need to learn more about marketing, and to get comfortable with its requirements, and I guess if I was serious about blogging there is a way to outsource the blog management and traffic building and just be responsible for the content.

Part of the problem is that I WANT to do it all. And not because I don’t want to outsource but because it is all interesting and fun to me. Learning to build a site, I would enjoy that. Watching the numbers, I enjoy that. Analyzing what people like – very cool.

So here I am back to my problem of the beach and the pebbles. Maybe someday someone will blow this metaphor apart for me, but the way I see it I have a pail and a beach covered with stones and there’s a limit to what fits in the bucket. So you have to pick which ones you really want in there and do those. And writing is one of the stones for me. And I think writing songs is one of the stones. And spending lots of quality time with my kids while they are little, that’s definitely one of my stones. And having time to be outside. Cooking. Having ideas. Trying new things. Making plans. Reading amazing books. Singing with old friends is pretty awesome, especially in the middle of nowhere, dressed in the same wet clothes you’ve been wearing for days, with cactuses in the background and warm, squishy mud underfoot.

Dear reader, if you will forgive me I may spend a few weeks just writing stream of conciousness like this and putting it out into the universe. I have embarked on a journey that I call project: defrag (I will explain more in future posts) and I think allowing myself to just be authentic could be helpful.

Lots of love to you, whoever you are, if you find yourself here. I believe that we can be part of creating and recognizing beauty in the world and I’m exploring what can make that possible in my life.