At a backyard barbeque I was introduced to a nervous lady this way.
"Here, if anyone can cure your blogger's block, this is the guy."
She was the typical failed blogger. One post six months ago announcing her intention to fill her generic blog with wit, humor and deep insight into the condition of humankind. One borderline interesting, if rambling post the next day. A follow-up post a week later confessing to be too busy to blog. An additional post in each of the next two months further lamenting her lack of time and suggesting that the local city council may be a nest of communists or perhaps closet anarchists -- details to follow. Eventually she delivered the stereotypical blog apology to her massive audience of one. She is shrouded in guilt for not writing and has exactly nothing to write about, save not writing.
I put on my best shrink demeanor and gave her my absolute top of the line advice:
"Don't write, don't blog, don't even open the site. Don't even think about blogging, not for one single moment."
The point is that blogging should not be about pressure. Blog writing is the furthest activity from a 'to do' list that humanoids have ever invented. If you have something to write, I told her, it will arrive fully formed and it will simply flow thru the keyboard and disgorge your wisdom to the multiverse.
She looked at me like I had made some graphic observation about her alimentary canal. Apparently she is one of those people who believe since everyone knows how to write, then it follows that everyone is a writer. I restrained an avuncular "Bite Me!" and moved on to the next gaggle of cocktail drinkers as the first round of braised cow rose from the grill.
Another guest had overheard the blog conversation and told me that not only was the reluctant blogger uptight about just about everything on the planet but her 82 yr. old father was an avid bird watcher and faithfully maintains a birders blog, which he updates several times a week. Aha! Paternal blog envy, got it.
As I drifted past the potato salad and ambrosia I wonder what my father's blog might have looked like. Reminiscences certainly would have brought up the Great Depression and later his service as a junior naval officer in the pacific during WWII. Nearly 30 years in the Dexter Pharmacy would have made for some interesting personality profiles, I know the pharmacy is still the set & setting in some of my dreams.
Politics! Now that would have been fun. We could have written dueling blogs in the late 60s and early 70s. We never saw eye to eye on anything political, but fleshing out our differences in writing would have been an interesting experience.
Late in the party the aforementioned birding father arrived home, until that time I was unaware the nervous non-blogger was also our hostess. Bird dad and I were introduced and we exchanged some thoughts on blogging, widgets and other blogger ephemera. We exchanged URLs and then he said:
"If you mention me in your blog......"
I completed his thought . . . "don't link you up."
"Exactly" he smiled.
Some bloggers like an audience. Others write for a small select group of followers, in Jack's case his birding group. Me? I like an audience. Agree with me or disagree loudly please, but Read Me! Read Me!
p.s. for the poker boyz -- the plant's name was Audrey II not Seymour.
