People have been linking to my blog here and there and it's giving me a little stage fright. With Eminem's voice in my head chanting, "You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. Opportunity comes once in a lifetime," I feel like I'm in a digital audition. (You know I can't pass up a good Eminem reference, him being such a inspiration of mine.) Knowing that new people are visiting the site is making me evaluate my entries. In the blog world, you're only as good as your last post, so what is the one post someone visiting may read. Was it an entertaining entry causing them to read on and give me a second and maybe even third chance? They may even be a gracious peruser and scroll through the entire screen's worth of entries. I can accept it if they discard me after that. If they read a week's worth of entries and judge it as crap, I can handle it. 7 entries should give anyone a pretty good idea of the tone of the blog and if it's not their thing I understand. If after 7 entries they think it's all crap, well then that's my fault. Please don't judge me on one entry; I'm allowed dull posts, but after 7...c'mon Hattie you better write something worthwhile.
I was jumping up and down last week because Dave Cullen author of Columbine commented on my post about the book. A real life writer stumbled across my quaint little online home thanks to a google search. Though I'm sure he only read the entry referencing his book, I started wondering who else has come across this blog and what did they find here? Oh God was it an entry talking about getting spooked and running out of my house for fear of an axe murdering intruder? Or worse...taxidermy (lame pictures of my husband posing with stuffed wild life from our hotel room). I get one entry to broadcast my point of view to the world, I better not get caught with my bad-grammar-pants down.
There are so many things wrong with this thinking. First of all the intention of this blog project was to expose myself despite my imperfections and general mediocrity, so why am I now retreating to performance mode praying to God that people like me, they "really really like me"? And second I was never going to write to cater to an audience. An audience is certainly more than welcome, but I wanted to post honestly, which sometimes means posts will be boring or stupid. Am I really looking for affirmation from a blog that was created to put my imperfections on display? Is this really my online attempt to fish for compliments whereby people tell me, "Actually Hattie you're not mediocre. You're brilliant, perfect even!". Bring out the therapist's couch, here we go again.
So to any of you visitors out there, hello and welcome to your first post. I promise there is some really good stuff worth reading somewhere in here. And if you don't like it yet try reading tomorrow. Seriously tomorrow is going to be really good. I actually have no idea what I'm writing about tomorrow, but I know you'll like me...no, IT, you'll like it, and me, you'll like me too. And to those of you faithful followers who are brave enough to display your little icon to the right side of the screen, thank you as always for staying so tried and true and for liking me, really really liking me. I like you too.
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This made me smile. I'm late for physical therapy, but I'll come back to say more.
ReplyDeleteI understand the stagefright. When I was struggling with this book, too frightened by failure to put anything on the page most days, my agent said, "Well, it's not like you're the first writer to be struck by stagefright."
ReplyDeleteOh. I had no idea that was it until she named it. That was the biggest hurdle to getting past it. (You just have to write it anyway.) You have, so you're ahead of the game.
I also recommend listening to "Stagefright" by The Band. It's about Bob Dylan, who suffered a terrible bout of it in the 60s. That feels like good company. And a great song. It helped me shrug it off. Good luck.
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ReplyDeleteHi Hattie, I happened over here from all plaidout, but only because I've had the pleasure of meeting Daniel at the store. I love the idea of your blog. It's hard to put yourself out there, but my own personal blog mantra is "it's my space". Meaning I'm on nobody's time table but my own, nor am I there to impress someone, uh unless they want to pay me tons of money to take pictures. :) Keep it up!!
ReplyDelete*I had a typo to fix.
I also came over this way from plaidout because i was surprised to see my long lost friend daniel featured there. keep on rocking my friend!
ReplyDeleteDave- Thanks for being my personal cheerleader.
ReplyDeleteHannah- I followed your link and realized I've lurked on your blog before...small world. Daniel shared your email with me and I'm sad we're only meeting after your move out of state :(
Jay- Well hey there!!! I'm not surprised you read All Plaidout. Mr. Wastler seems to know everyone. Hope you're doing well.