Goal Anxiety

The little blogger icon in my Google Chrome bookmark bar has been giving me anxiety recently.

Every time I see it, I'm reminded that I haven't blogged in over two weeks. 15 days to be exact. (I have to be honest, I just used a calculator for 27-12=15.) It's really not a big deal (the blogging--clearly my math skills are outrageously horrible). Except that while I was unemployed, I set a goal to blog every four days. And then once I got a job, I decided to blog once a week. Mostly just to feel like I was doing more with my life than watching 30 Rock reruns and Netflixing terrible movies (this roughly describes the last week of my life. Did I say roughly? I meant, "this describes the last week of my life"). Of course, there's something about setting a real goal, and then working to keep it, and then inevitably failing in some way, that sets you up perfectly to feel intense anxiety at the sight of a little orange box.

Related story. A couple years ago, I set a goal to run four times a week. I played soccer in high school, and August conditioning week and our timed 2-mile run always filled me with dread. I still carry a lot of that dread with me even though I haven't played high school soccer in over 8 years, and it drives me to keep a respectable 2-mile time. I started November 11, 2010. I know because I kept a detailed Google doc to record all of this--what days I ran, how far I ran, my times. I did really well. For months and months (except for 5 days when I was in Michigan/terribly sick), I ran or swam at least four days a week. My 2-mile time got faster. I did some 4- and 5-mile runs. And then somewhere in April (April 12), I stopped keeping track in my Google doc. And then somewhere in May I stopped doing it four days a week. And then in August I moved back to the Northwest. And I have gone running exactly 5 times in the last twelve months.

Is there such a thing as setting a goal and then keeping it forever? If you are one of those people who can do this, please stop reading my blog or interacting with me ever. Make a goal of it.

But back to my blogger's block. I've tried blogging in the past two weeks. In fact, I drafted two full posts that are still sitting in my drafts. One of them I even posted for about three minutes on 8/20. And then I pressed the "revert to draft" button, closed my web browser, turned off my computer, and went to sleep. I wrote it between the hours of midnight and 1:30am. Probably for the best.

I think I'm having a hard time blogging because what I've been really preoccupied with recently is what it means to be a single 26-year-old feminist Mormon. And it is simultaneously the only thing I want to write about and the thing I feel really silly writing about. It seems like since it's so preoccupying that writing would help sort it out, but I'm at a loss for where to start. Do I start with a long and serious post that gets really honest and raw(absolutely not)? Do I start with a humorous and light-hearted post about gender stereotypes(meh)? Do I even dare blog about something that actually matters to me(!)?

Ok people, let's be honest. What I really need is for something terribly awkward and hilarious to happen to me so I can blog about that and forget about all this life crap.