Monday, April 23, 2012

Hi, I'm Kimberly. Hi, I'm Janice.

I'm trying to force myself to blog today.

Over the past couple months, I've gotten into a really good blogging routine, and I don't want to lose my momentum. But I've been sitting in front of my computer for an hour and a half, and my mind is drawing a blank. Then writing that reminded me of the You've Got Mail scene where Meg emails Tom about drawing a blank while trying to insult the "bottom dweller who recently belittled [her] existence."
Then I had to try to find that scene on Youtube. And then I started brainstorming all of my favorite You've Got Mail scenes (of which there are many), and started trying to decide if I like the "lone reed" scene better than the "don't they know they're supposed to have a last name" scene. But really, why choose? 

It has clearly been a productive evening. 

I started two blog posts. However, I only wrote one sentence of each before I realized that one sentence was exactly everything that I had to say on the subject. First, I was going to blog about my recent Craigslist acquisition. For some reason, I wanted to start it in a foreboding way, so I wrote the following sentence: "I broke the cardinal rule of Craigslist: I responded to a posting and went to a man's apartment in downtown Portland completely alone." After staring at that sentence for at least 20 minutes (and by "stare" I mostly mean I slowly wandered away from the blogger tab, and meandered onto my Pinterest bookmark. Then the Askmormongirl bookmark. And Hello Giggles). And then I came back and read my Craigslist sentence, felt a sinking feeling (it was somewhere between the first sentence of a really crappy mystery novel, and an entry from a 10th grader's creative writing journal), and immediately deleted it. Then I started typing about Pinterest. Real stream of consciousness stuff, hoping that something amazing and insightful would boil to the surface. All my English teachers lied to me--free writing sucks. 

Deleted that too. 

Then I turned to a tried-and-true method of prewriting: I googled "I'm sitting in front of my computer trying to think of something to blog about, and nothing is coming to mind. What should I do?" Which is how I ended up on the 195 Hilarious and Inspirational Facebook Status Updates. Which was clearly written and compiled by 14-year-olds. 

This made me sad to be human, and sucked all of the writing life out of me. But at least we can all sleep easy knowing that the following is one of the most inspirational Facebook status updates ever: "I must be addicted to smiling and laughing. I don't believe I've ever said to someone, 'Please don't do or say anything funny, I'm just not in the mood for happiness right now!'"

Thanks, Kimberly! Or was it Janice?

3 comments:

Elisa said...

It's like they're an entire generation of cocktail waitresses.

I don't want you to lose blogging momentum either. I love your blog.

julie said...

I had a very happy couple hours last week while I was sick watching You've Got Mail. Along with the long version of Pride and Prejudice and the Gwenyth Paltrow version of Emma. A day well spent.

Josephine said...

I like that your blog posts are topical and explorative, more than a live journal though I like those too. I just think what you do requires hard work and I really enjoy reading it.