You Can Only Return Once

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve added my thoughts to the blogosphere, so I suppose I owe all of my faithful followers an explanation for my absence. It’s really simple actually.

As I wrote articles for this blog I found that I suffered from a serious case of “if it’s not perfect, I can’t publish it” disease. I guess this is a form of writer’s block, but it was really debilitating and prevented me from making a regular contribution to the blog. There were many, many attempts to write, but in the pursuit of the perfect column, I ended up unwilling to put something out that I thought wasn’t “just exactly perfect,” as Bob Weir used to tell us before the start of a show at Winterland. Go back and read my last blog titled “In-Alienable Rights” and you’ll understand why I wasn’t very happy with myself. That column was terrible, yet it had great potential. And I failed to bring out that potential. So being disappointed about my failure to capture my thoughts perfectly, I quit.

But here is the interesting thing about this period of time, and why I am now returning to my blog now. I recently went back and read some blogs that I wrote but never published, and they were actually pretty damn good (IMHO)! But at the time I just couldn’t see through my “it’s not perfect” lens, and as a result, I refused to publish them for public consumption. Those blogs are now quite dated, so they are not worth sharing, but let’s just say that John Boehner and Sarah Palin should count their blessings.

But no doubt Boehner and Palin will surely provide grist for the mill again, so I’m going to give it another try. I’ve learned that I have to trust my instincts and sometimes just go with a first draft. The endless editing in search for perfection can actually detract from achieving, well, perfection. I can now see that over-editing took the spirit out of my message, so somehow I have to find the balance between editing for clarity and grammar, and editing out the emotion I was feeling at the time.

My best writing seems to come when I get upset about something and I sit down and write my first impressions about the issue. Take for example “The Mean Streets of the Republican Tea Party,” my contribution from March of last year. That Tea Party rally in Ohio struck an emotional and personal cord in me, and I wrote that in one sitting with very few edits. I need to cultivate that “fired up, ready to go” emotion in future columns and not trade perfect for passion.

So I’m going to get back on the horse, and be true to my sub-header and produce “frequent ramblings and nonsense about the world and what makes it interesting.” I hope you are still there to read and share.