on writing well -- notDecember 6, 2005
Writer's block doesn't even begin to cover it. Write? Me? Why? Is online journaling -- I can't call this blogging -- really writing at all? I read awhile back, maybe in Nobody Knows Anything, about "blog depression". I googled "blog depression" and got this megnut.com entry as the first hit. Not encouraging. In fact kind of depressing. Then, instead of hitting the back button and checking the next hit, I popped up to her home page and what to my wondering eyes did appear in recent entries? Vietnamese coffee attempt 1. Well, that stirred up a hornet's nest of memories alright. Nothing to do with writer's block and I've never been to Saigon but there is the matter of the Vietnamese boyfriend, which I see I have at least alluded to before and sort of told the story . Besides wine (me) and beer (him) we drank Vietnamese coffee, which he made with one of those little metal brewing things that sets on top of the cup -- exactly as illustrated in the megnut entry except his was not that shiny. It had a kind of patina of corrosion on it. I had one of them too. I have no memory of where I bought it. I may still have it somewhere in the back of a cabinet collecting dust somewhere. Shall I go look for it? Naw, the last thing I want to do is stir up dust when what I really should be doing is washing dishes -- my dishwasher has been broken for months -- and a host of other chores that take precedence over writing and definitely take precedence over looking for that little metal drip brewing cup that I really don't have a use for because if I really want Vietnamese coffee I can just zip over to one of the Vietnamese restaurants in Lawrence. Not that I'm craving Vietnamese coffee so much as I'm craving some kind of link to my own past, you know, some kind of thread that connects thirty-odd years of so-called adulthood so it all feels like the same life and not a whole bunch of separate lives that have nothing whatsoever to do with who I really am. There's content there for sure. Blog content? Aren't blogs supposed to be about politics, food, or technology? Isn't content supposed to be hard hitting muckraking journalism and opinion that shapes opinion? Oh, here's the blog depression pamphlet at the nonist on the second hit. Apparently I have content anxiety... go figure. Suppose I had married him. Then what? Would my writing be any better?New Mexico trip report and crane pictures (and Very Large Array pictures) coming soon. Really.
Today's
Reading
Down the Bay by Wallace P. Stanley
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan