Being off

Can you tell…any of you who’ve been reading this blog a while, that I’m a little “off”? I don’t even know what I mean by that. Maybe it’s the video. Moving into a new way of expression.

What makes you do that kind of thing?

I had a friend try something new and then tell me she felt foolish after and I thought, “It must be universal.” There’s a glow from it at first…from whatever the initial creative impulse was, and then that fades, and then you feel foolish. The nice thing about hearing something like that from a friend, is you quit feeling like it’s a big deal. You remember, “Oh yeah, this is the way it is. This is the way it is when you take a risk.”

There always seems to be that element of risk taking in “putting yourself out there.” It’s the kind of thing you feel when you have a conversation and wonder afterwards if you “said too much.”

When you put something “out there” over time, like you do with a blog, you get more used to it, but then, every once in a while, you realize that, over time, you’re telling a story and you wonder what it’s about, what it says about you. And you wonder if people can tell when you’re “off.” Or maybe they just get bored.

But I’ve realized that if I thought about it as I was doing it, I’d likely never do anything, and if I did, I’d never say anything real. I’d censor too much. I’d always be thinking, “I can’t say that!”

And I realize that when I tie myself to a schedule I get something like writer’s block. I know that no one else cares about my self-imposed schedule. It’s one of those things that become a figment of your own imagination. So “my plan” to do video on Sunday’s is now defunct. I feel better already.