The Three W's: What to Write Where?

I'm not sure why, but lately I've felt as though I haven't had much to write about. I'm not sure if it's that I haven't had much to write or that maybe I just haven't felt the desire to write what's on my mind.

As I've mentioned in the past, I intentionally don't write a lot of personal things on this blog. That's not why I started it and I'm not narcissistic enough (yes, we're all narcissistic to some degree) to think that my thoughts, dreams, and personal observations are all that important. I don't really feel compelled to express myself or talk about what's on my mind and it's not that I don't feel like people will care what I have to say; it's simply that I don't care what I have to say. In this age of information, I feel as though anything to be said has already been said and so why should I repeat it?

But I digress. Perhaps all the definitions and various places to write are slowly killing my creative outlet. Perhaps making the decision of what to write and where is becoming difficult enough that I choose to simply not write anything. My time can be used for more important things than figuring out where I should write, let alone what I should write.

Writing about events and places is easy: I simply recount what happened and maybe include some pictures for eye candy. But nobody wants to hear about the ride into work, or the meetings, or the support emails, or... or maybe some people do? Well, to those people I say go find another hobby. Or at least, find another blog. I find it absolutely revolting and a total waste of textual space and time to see people writing about things that have absolutely no substance. I will not become a twitter shitter or an iRaam. The last thing I want this blog to become is my personal diary. (This post is coming dangerously close to what I'm trying to avoid.)

Then there is the question of where to write. When I started this blog, it was easy. Facebook wasn't even open to the public and Twitter didn't even exist. Now I find myself posting thoughts, activities, and other updates on Twitter (trying desperately to stay within the 140 character jail) with my Facebook status automatically being updated by Twitter. (Then my Facebook friends, who probably never read my blog, comment on my updates and make me feel compelled to reply on FB.) Anything that doesn't fit on Twitter I usually put on my blog as an Aside (it appears without a post title), and longer stuff, like this post, get the honor of being a full-blow blog post with a Twitter update announcing it being published.

So why haven't I been writing more? I've been asking myself that question a lot the past few weeks and the only answer I can come up with is that my rule of not writing about passing thoughts or seemingly pointless observations is leaving me without much to write. I've been very busy concentrating on work and fitness and I haven't had much time for exploring my various interests or writing about them. So I'll try to start writing more asides with what's on my mind and see where that takes this blog.

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  1. makes sense to me. you know i’ve been thinking of starting a blog, but I wasn’t sure what i’d write on there either. with facebook and twitter occupying most of the interwebs, i thought i would join the blogosphere since I’m the wordiest person I know to expand on my thoughts/opinions.

    what’s worked for me in the past (for newspaper articles) is writing down ideas that I envision as nothing less than an editorial. I write down the topic with whatever is on my mind in a text file, mull it over for a few days, and then write it out as a few paragraphs.

    Maybe try that? Rather than sitting down and writing something as a passing thought or pointless observation (I don’t know your method though), write the broad topic down and think about it while you’re doing your extensive workouts 🙂

    • I do write down things that I eventually want to make into a post, but perhaps I don’t follow that procedure frequently enough. Even this post only started as a sentence or two — before posting it as an aside, I decided to turn it into a few paragraphs.

      When I’m working out, I usually blank my head and try to disconnect my body from my mind so as to ignore the pain and fatigue. But that 1 hour of time could definitely be used to think about stuff I want to write. I’ll have to try that tonight. Thanks! 🙂