(Preliminary grumble: WordPress 1.2.1 for iPhone ate a nearly-done draft of this post when I tried to go from local draft to online draft. It also didn’t update to 2.x through the standard App Store update process despite both being free. WTF, WordPress?!?)

Sigh. Another long stretch without posting. It’s not like I have nothing to say. One look at my Twitter feed will tell you that. And I have posts cooking in my brain about favorite topics like Lost and The Best Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of and a bunch of other things as well. (I mean, I saw MUSE live, ferchrissakes! MUSE!!)

So why no blog posts from me? I’ve been feeling really frozen up inside, my guts knotted by anxiety, for months.

You ever get the feeling that you’re standing at a Rubicon in your life? What’s more, have you ever felt terrified, even though you know that crossing over is The Right Thing To Do™?

I’ve been there for a while now…almost a year, really, since I started the current job. In other respects, I’ve been there a lot longer. Depending on how you prefer to look at it, it could be since I had surgery, since I left home en route to college, or even going back to murky childhood. I’ve definitely written on the subject before, though.

And I’m feeling kind of “reinvented out” after the number of times I’ve done it in my life, so I really want to get this one right in order to not have to do it agin anytime soon. It’s hard work, don’tchaknow!

A few things have me brooding on this topic again:

1. Getting ready to move out of the apartment I moved into shortly after starting at my old job, thereby shedding the very last vestige of the life I led during the Tale of Woe™
2. Watching other friends being or becoming all self-actualized ‘n’ stuff. (There are six links in there, folks!)
3. Feeling like I’m finally about ready to start expressing myself in the world now that I’ve finished the process of creating the “release version” of me.

The hardest things I’m going to have to learn are self-motivation and discipline, my twin bugaboos. Need to turn those dreams into action and all that. Like I’ve said before, inspiration is never my problem. It’s that “perspiration” part that always gets me.

Universe, help me channel the Spirit of Nike®…

It’s just that taking that step and really committing to not procrastinate ad infinitum, to not constantly sedate myself with the modern opiate of the masses, and to stop fearing the risk of failure is just pants-wetting terrifying after a lifetime of the bad patterns.

My rational mind knows that doing is a skill like any other, one that anyone can learn regardless of initial talent for it (which is good because my initial talent level is roughly that of a rhinoceros with a neurological disorder taking up skateboarding). My irrational, software-virus-ridden mind tells me something quite again in the voice of my parents, every teacher I ever let down by not fully realizing my Awesome Potential™, and every friend or lover I ever offended in a moment of thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, that voice has always been so much louder than the voice of reason inside my dense cranium. (‘Sides, nowadays, even the voice of reason is starting to sound a bit suspect…)

So, the emotional pressure has built up inside of me and I feel like something’s gonna give. EIther I’m going to become Super Self-Actuated Sonya™ or I’ll just give in to my couch-tuber tendencies forevermore. Ye gods, that sounds emo! >.<

I just hope that, much like Lane Meyer, all I need is a taste of success, and I’ll find it suits me.

In the meantime I stand, tremulant*.

*10 Scooby Snacks™ to the first commenter to correctly identify the source of this title. And yes, I know it’s not a real word!

If I’ve inspired you to buy any of the stuff I gush about on my blog, please do so using my links. I’m an Amazon and iTunes affiliate and get a bounty on all referred sales. I may be employed again, but every little bit helps. (BTW: Mouse over my links and images for happy happy easter egg fun time yay!) Thanks!
—The Management

I actually have a meditative, revelatory, and hopefully interesting post brewing…but first, some kvetching. In the midst of a perfectly lovely experience, I was given an answer to a question that’s been bugging me since I first launched this blog: Why the hell am I not getting more comments? It was a deeply annoying answer, though not so much annoying about the person providing it as it was in a more general sense.

Here’s some context: I had put a Porcupine Tree album on the stereo as sonic accompaniment to the beginning of an otherwise rewarding experience and, when asked about the band, I was a bit surprised. I had expected that the person asking the question would have read my recent post regarding that band, so I commented to that effect, only to be told, “Oh…TLDR.”

“TLDR?” I replied.

“Too Long, Didn’t Read.”

And I was annoyed. I put it behind me then and went on to have the aforementioned and soon-to-be-cogitated-upon experience, but am still finding that it annoys me now that I’ve had a chance to reflect further.

I get that keeping up with the Internet as a source of information — all the blogs and social networks and news and what-have-you — is very much like the now-clichéd simile of “drinking from a fire hose.” I really do. I know that no one has the time to read every word of every article that clamors for our attention online. But I guess I would have expected better from my friends…especially the ones I’ve known for a long time, as opposed to newer friends like my commenter.

This blog is two things in equal measure…

1. A way to make myself write regularly and develop good habits that will help me in the long term to feel more able to tackle larger writing projects.
2. A way to put myself out there in a way I really hadn’t been outside of my presences on Tribe and Free-Association (which, unfortunately, are vanishingly small corners of the ‘net) so that my existing friends could follow me thanks to the miracles of feed-readers and better-frequented social networks which can be made to re-broadcast these posts.

So, for purposes of reason #1, the lack of feedback isn’t a deal-breaker and I’ll continue doing this regardless. But for reason #2, I find this “TLDR” response somewhat galling. Even in posts that don’t necessarily seem personal on their face, such as my music and politics-related items, I give pieces of myself and do my level best to keep the writing entertaining even when covering heavy subjects. But, hell’s bells, they’re not even all that long!

So, I send my little gripe out over the intertubes in the hopes that my friends will start giving me the feedback that I both need and crave. I need to keep improving my writing, and knowing that I’m worth just a few minutes of time would be rather nice as well. It can be here on the WordPress blog, which is even easier since I set things so that no one needs to have a registered account with me to leave a comment anymore, or for the LJ-inclined among you it can be on the LiveJournal re-broadcast. But it’s better here. If you pop in your Twitter ID and your blog’s RSS feed, you’ll get the returned “back-scratch” of seeing those advertised here on my site for free, perhaps earning your own writings a wider readership. (Thanks, CommentLuv and WP Twitip ID!) Such a deal…

OK, now on to more positive things! Thanks for indulging my wee ‘plaint…if you read this far.