In Defense of Blogging

My husband is bored with my blog.  He's had enough of procrastination, posted and real-life.  He is of the opinion that writing about procrastination is getting in the way of writing.  He could be right.


I am spending an average of an hour and a half per day writing these posts, and solving the intermittent technical glitches that interrupt their publishing.  At the rate of two pages per hour, the blog may be "costing" me about 15 pages a week.  Not that all of those 15 pages would be ultimately usable.  But they probably need to be written anyway, as what poet William Stafford called "scaffolding" erected in the process of writing a finished piece.   


On the other hand, I am reluctant to abandon or foreshorten what has been a useful vehicle.  This blog has allowed me to reflect on why I have put off things I want to do and things I have to do, and failed to finish so much of what I have started.  It has prompted me to read more widely and deeply about procrastination, to discover what research is being done and what it reveals, and to identify some strategies that may prove valuable.  I am clearly not done with this subject, as the problem itself has taken deep root in my life.  If we use the "pregnancy weight" maxim--"Expect it to take as long for the weight to come off as it took to put it on"--I could be at this for years, if not for life.  


Blogging about procrastination has also gotten me writing regularly, and with purpose.  No small accomplishment, given my previous starts and stops.  Something about the public nature of the venture--even if my "public" is small, and sporadic, and seeded with friends and family--and the commitment I've made to regularity keeps me juggling obligations and schedules and unseen occurrences to make sure I get this done, five days a week, every week.


And then there's the fact that I enjoy doing it.  The process itself, as so many of us have discovered, is fun!  I look forward to opening the blog "dashboard" and finding out what I have to say.  And I like having a Google presence in addition to my 2004 dismissive mention on the Dummocrat site.  I love hearing from readers who like what they've read, or take issue with it.  I love seeing my "visitor map" sprinkled with dots all over the globe, and imaging the reader in Sweden, or the Phillipines, or Kansas.  I enjoy learning the new skills and tricks involved in blogging, and feeling a part of the community of bloggers, so many of them contributing work I respect, and admire, and am made wiser by.


So, for this day anyway, I choose "to blog."  And recognize that my husband is not really "one of us," the procrastinators of the world.