Monday, April 10, 2006

Selling Out

Someone I have a lot of respect for as a person, a writer and a blogger once described my old blog as "excellent". That shocked me and made me feel extremely special. And it was all downhill from there.

I have this top secret dream of writing. I don't know what I want to write, but I want to be published. PhD dissertations don't count. Part of my quest for immortality. I have watched my blogs deteriorate at an amazing rate. I think I read too many blogs. The more I read, the more I find myself unconsciously trying to imitate. I find myself trying to anticipate what people who read my blogs want to see. And I find myself sucking.

But it's hard not to try to imitate....There are some absolutely fabulous Nigerian blogs out there! I had the most vivid dream last night; I found out that blogger had hired an entire team of Nigerian Bloggers as staff members, because of how amazing all the blogs were. Okay, in the dream, I was in a dorm room for grad students in Queens College with Lolu and one of the Blogger staff members and some random other QC girls who were doing everything from attending law school to heck, I don't remember..., but I digress. The point is that it is embedded in my deepest subconscious that there are a zillion bloggers waay better than I will ever be, but therein lies the dilemma: Why do I care?

Blogging for me used to be a place I used to empty my head. My best blogs are written early in the morning, before I read anything, see anything, or talk to anyone. I wake up at 3:17am and have a Eureka moment, and run to the internet to pour it out. Usually, it comes out 57 times worse than it was in my head, but then I read it 6 months later and its still absolutely fantastic. I need to do a lot of tweaking, but the heart is still there. I need to get back to that place. Blogging for me and not for the people.

*sigh*

Time will tell.

I had about 800 Eureka Moments last night. But I'm not going to blog them. I'm going to let them marinate and return to my subconscious and re-emerge as something else.

Till then, please don't misunderstand my few and far between comments as disinterest. I'm reading...and I'm horribly jealous. I'm just trying to get back to doing it for me. I must behead the attention-whore.

1 comment:

soul said...

Honey... remember this is always about you simple.
If you want to reach an audience.. then I guess you blog for them.. but if this is personal.. then blog for you.

I blog as a release (still) sometimes I catch myself saying hmmm I wonder how.. but then I scratch that thought.