post it.

Do you hate blogging?

Cuz I think I do.

I didn't used to.  I used to love it.  It was fun.  An extracurricular activity I regularly took part in.

Then real-life people would tell me they read my blog, followed by a compliment of some sort.  (That's nice.  Thank you.  I appreciate the love.)

And then...I closed up.  Super tight.  I was Mary Katherine Gallagher--nervous, anxious...sweaty.  Maybe a little paranoid.

I didn't like people knowing my business.  (Uh, that's what a blog is, right?)

I liked the mostly anonymity of blogging.  I told a handful of people I had one.  And then, if someone in cyberEarth happened upon it--so what?  They don't know me.  I don't know them.  I won't run into them in the grocery store and have to talk about what I wrote.  (Like, why would I want to do that anyway?  I wrote it.  I know what's there.) 

So, pretty soon after I started getting feedback from these real-live people, I felt I had to come up with something read-worthy for every post.  Something profound and interesting.  It was annoying.  So over the past year, I haven't wanted to write much.  It hasn't been fun.

But then a few weeks ago during Christmas dinner, my brother mentioned the time I killed my cat.  (I don't remember why.  Surely, I was being mocked.)

I started thinking about that paper I wrote in my BYU English class.  It was about my dead cat.  When I was eight.  I killed it.  I'm not weird.  (I mention BYU for one reason:  to show that my target audience may or may not have fully appreciated a story about an animal killing.)

This paper was a zinger.  Classic.  A shining moment in my academic past. 

When the assignment was given, we were first instructed to write about an experience that changed our lives somehow.  It was to be written as a personal narrative.  And while others were writing about their missions, a car accident, their high school graduation, I chose to write about Fluffy and the day the music died.

Paper written.  Peer edited.  Professor approved.  Done.   

The next week, we were given another assignment.  We were to write about the same experience from a perspective of someone else who was involved.  I thought about it.  Who else was there?  No one.  Just me and the cat.  Dead cat.

I told my sister about my dilemma.  Lo and behold, she had been there!  She remembers how it all went down.  Only three at the time.

She told me what she remembered and off I went.  I told her story.  The story of a three year old baby...watching as the fate of Fluffy unraveled.

Then the next week came.  I was apparently not done telling the story of a girl and her cat.  My professor instructed, "Now you need to come up with one more perspective to write from.  Something non-human.  An object.  A tree.  A fly on the wall, literally."

Well, hot dog!  And phew!  Cuz I only had one more character in my story.  (My ego and I couldn't help thinking that she had my story in mind when making this assignment...)

Delving into the mind of Fluffy was an exercise I did not soon forget.  To tell her tale from her perspective was eye opening.  I ended her story in a very sad tone.  Cuz it was.  Fluffy's last words were full of confusion and panic.  The cat I begged for and loved was gone.  Gone.  GONE!! 

The final assignment was to put all the perspectives together into one paper; into one full, well- rounded story.  So I did.  And I got an A.

I'm sure by now you're wondering, what's your point?  (And if you're a sibling, you're thinking, "Uh huh...heard it. What's your point?")  And I'm not sure how my essay story relates to this post, but here's my point:

I like writing stuff.  I don't always like writing stuff that means anything to anyone.  I like typing just to type.  It's fun.  I like seeing how fast I can type without messing up.

I like the date on top of blog post to be recent.  It makes me feel...like I'm on the ball.  Even though, if I never wrote another post it wouldn't throw my world off its axis or yours.  Everything would be fine.

But I miss the days of "Tags" and "Look at the booger my daughter picked!"  When everything was simple and nobody cared what you wrote so long as you wrote.  Remember those days?  Before Facebook?

I remember it.  I liked it.

So, I'm going to pretend that you aren't reading my blog and go back to writing anything and nothing and whatever.

 

Ham.