Why is it so hard to stick to what you say you’re going to do? This is not a rhetorical question. I am not asking for a friend. I am really asking myself why my love of writing and sharing my thoughts has not translated into the discipline necessary to maintain a writing and publishing schedule on this blog. I have all the makings of greatness. I mean, the material is top tier! But it all breaks down when we start talking about consistency.
I want to make a confession. I have grown to enjoy watching YouTube more than most scripted television. I absolutely love watching vlogs and experiencing life through the eyes of someone else in a raw, unscripted way. It’s entertaining, sure. But more than anything I love the ordinariness of it all. It really is just a group of black women who pick up a camera and walk me through their daily lives – the normal, the joyful, the painful. I understand that we only see what they want to share and I’m good with that. I don’t want to know it all. We’re not friends. But there is something in the consistency that preaches to me.
I am a diligent person. I have to be to be successful in what I do. For some frustrating reason, that diligence doesn’t always translate to this blogging thing. I get a bug and write and then it fades. I am not sure how to fix that or make it work in my favor.
When I started this blog, my goal was to share my experiences living and loving life in Seattle. In many ways, it was exactly what I find enjoyable about vlogs. I wanted to bring an unfiltered, unscripted look at the ordinary and extraordinary moments of life in Seattle as a black woman. Simple, right? Sigh. It is simple. And yet, in my mind I have made it complicated and let’s be honest. When you spend the majority of your week identifying, solving, and eliminating problems, you don’t want to think that hard about anything else.
I am sharing this with you because as a writer who deeply loves words, and as a person who considers myself to be life’s biggest fan, I want the two things to collide in the pages of this blog. I want to use words to share the fullness of life. That is the heart of this blog. Sometimes, I let life get in the way of living. I don’t want that to be the story my life tells.
We are at the end of August. I’m still a bit shocked at how quickly time flies as you age. The year is almost over, but it’s not over. There is time for me to reset. The last quarter of this year, I want to honor the declaration I made at the beginning of the year. I told you — and myself — that I was going to stop neglecting my blog. That is why I find myself in this very moment sitting in a coffee shop in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle making updates to the look and feel of my blog and penning this very post. Sometimes, the way to start is just to start. No planning, no thinking, no editing. Just let it rip!
As I prepare to hit publish on this post and send it out into the wild of the interwebs, I feel good. I have some pretty cool things coming up in the next few weeks that provide a great opportunity for me to share what’s going on in life and Seattle. Maybe you care, maybe you don’t. But this is my house (virtual though it may be) and I can do what I want!
