Harder to write it than to read it

Every time I'm impelled to behave well by, in fact, adding material to my blog, I have to face the exact same demon: WORDS!

Think about it: words swirl through our minds all day long. We probably have the exact same thought fifty or more times a day. "I'm hungry; where's the bathroom; how am I going to pay for that; has the dog been walked; ohmygod, everything I need for tomorrow is in the cleaners!"

Most of our daily appetite for words are banal and mundane and most assuredly cliche. Even those of us who are pretty good with words (like writers) dry up when we're put under some pressure, especially when there is no paycheck on the table. Blog writing is especially hard. If we have no big following or we don't know who's reading because they don't comment, we're writing in a vacuum, looking into our own navels and saying what's on our minds (and remember the list of useless thinking I gave you above).

Yet I read the blogs like an addict. Some are punishingly biased and consequently not worth the time they take to even boot up. Others are open, nuanced and enlivening. I read Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish daily and David Kuo on Belief Net several times a month (and that's about how often he posts there). But suffice it to say, writing is hard work, not casual play. But if you have the gift of words, you are compelled to write now and then. Invitation: comment!