Shame on The Universe   Poetry and Thoughts on the Universe

I posted my first post on this blog a year ago today.

I have been blogging for a whole year. That amazes me.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve got the attention span of a hamster on speed, but I feel like it has been a lot longer than that. Then again, I also feel that way about my last year in general; so much of it has changed.

In the spirit of that change, here are 5 things I learned about myself from a year of blogging:

1.) I’m more of a poet than I am a writer.

I started writing this blog with the intent of changing/enriching the world. I wanted to write about mental health issues, personality typology, psychology self-help, etc. I felt if I was going to start writing, it would need to have a purpose, an end goal.

However, as noble and nice as those goals were, they don’t necessarily get readers, nor did they really get me writing. Doing the daily prompts did help me get a flow going, but it wasn’t until NaPoWriMo that I actually started to take this blog seriously.

It reminded me how much I love poetry. I find it makes it easier for me to express my thoughts and emotions in the moment. Even if, half the time, I end up with a bunch of depressing poems. It worked for Sylvia Plath, right?

But I also find it really fun. Trying to find the right rhyme to end your verse, without forcing things or ruining the flow, is incredibly challenging. But when you get it done right, it is incredibly rewarding.

2.) I talk too much, and I need to write more.

I have a friend who reads my blog. She’s been reading it from the start, and she makes sure to read everything I do. She says that she really enjoys what I write.

I have no idea why though. Not because I don’t think it is good; I wouldn’t make posts I don’t think are ready to be read. But because she is the one who gets to have all my pure, unaltered idea vomit thrown at her on a regular basis whenever we hang out.

Whether its philosophy, atheism, politics or any of the other things I’m interested in, she has heard me go hours and hours of diatribes that would probably make most people lose their minds.

Now, I imagine if I took all the time I spent melting her brain with my rants, and instead took the time to write them down. I’d have three times as many posts by now.

If you were to also add all the times I’ve had a personal rant in my head that I never bothered to voice to anyone….

Well, I don’t think I would have time to do anything but write.

Regardless, I should probably start writing more things down. Which means…

3.) I always should have a pen and paper. (Or start recording myself like a loon.)

I have forgotten the amount of times I have had an amazing idea, the start of a good poem, or a nice melody, and lost it forever because I couldn’t write it down in time.

Many creative people have as well, and it so it is mandatory that we all have a pen and paper on us at all times. I’m getting better with doing that, but it isn’t always feasible. So I’ve tried to expand to my note taking to other forms of technology.

I don’t really like typing notes into my phone, because it takes too long, and I have a crappy, unreliable phone. However, recording my self tends to work in a pinch, especially with how good voice to text has gotten.

With it, I can idea vomit onto a computer at record speed. It is probably the best way for me to get my ideas down.

So why don’t I do it more often?

Because I get most of my ideas on the train, bus, or walking around. People tend to be sitting/standing/walking by me, and so I look crazy. Plus, sometimes I like to write about more controversial topics, and I’d rather not have to fight the bible-thumping MRA republican Nazi Sith lord that may happen to sit next to me some day.

So, until I either lose enough shame to be fine with looking even crazier in public, I will just stick with the writer’s classic.

4.) I do my best writing on the spot, but I should still revise.

I tend to write best when I just throw my ideas down. Whenever I have been able to sit down and get into a groove, I write the stuff that I am most proud of. The things that I have found to be the weakest were things that I planned out, made outlines for and then wrote over days.

It’s a little counter intuitive, but working out what I want to write just stifles my natural creativity.

I know that doesn’t work for a lot of people. They need to create outlines, rough drafts, revisions galore, etc. before they have something they feel is good enough for people to see.

I tend to write how I speak, and I think I’m well spoken. So my writing reflects that.

That being said, you can always clean things up. You can polish up the writing to make it shine, cut out excess bits, change things around to flow better, and just make it a better piece in general. You are able to do the type of things that you aren’t be able to do in conversation. (Although it would be really awesome if we could.)

It’s something I don’t do nearly enough. So I just need to carve out time every week where I can sit down and write. Not too hard, right? Well…

5.) I need to do more to motivate myself.

Last, and most importantly, I need to motivate myself more. I can’t do any of the things I listed above if I can’t get myself motivated enough to actually do them.

Back when I started this blog, I had motivation. I was trying to find a purpose, a direction in life. I wanted to give myself a reason to get up in morning that wasn’t just paying bills. Other blogs and armchair psychologists told me blogging would do that, one thing led to another, and now the plague that is my blog was released on the internet.

But now I have a new, much better and more mentally stimulating job. My self-esteem is at healthy, levels, and am feeling more positive about life.

Because things are going so well, and with how busy work has been lately, I have been letting this blog fall to the wayside. It’s become easy to push a post off until tomorrow, then until next week, and off until next month.

Do I need to write? No.

But it is something that I enjoy. It is something concrete I can point to when I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something. I allows me to leave something behind when I go, even if it’s just in my own corner of the internet.

All those things should motivate me, and they do. But like I have stated before, misery is probably my best motivator, and will continue until it eventually kills me.

So hopefully this next coming year of blogging will be eventful, inspiring, and just miserable enough to keep things going.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Shaman