Plum Blossoms

I don't blog all that often anymore, but it doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about things to blog about. I was in the middle of writing something on Rep. Tom DeLay's situation (briefly, I have doubt about the charges but I still think he's an ass), and I could actually visualize in my head a series of posts on the BC teachers' illegal strike (briefly, I think the government blew it but it was the teachers' fault).

But that appears to be the problem: too many posts in my head, and when I try to write them, they often don't come out the way I intend.

I read a lot. The newspaper, books, magazines, blogs... ...I'm very fond of absorbing written text. What I never did do much (before blogging) was write (outside of necessity, of course). It wasn't that I was bad at it, but I never felt compelled enough to do it.

I can't blog like Instapundit: there's no point in being a linkfest when the vast majority of what I receive is from other blogs anyway (of course Instapundit is more than a linkfest, but it's a matter of degree). And I hate leaving a point on just a few lines or a couple of paragraph (clearly evident to any reader that's made it this far!), and so the posts I do write get somewhat long: I feel like I'm aiming for USS Clueless levels.

Now, while the posts may be trying to get to USS Clueless levels in length, the same cannot be said in the quality department. This is because I tend to ramble: one point leads to another, an aside comment would taking on a life of its own, etc. And so often I reach a dilemma: a post either becomes weighed down by all the extraneousness and doesn't resemble anything I had in mind at first, or I have to cut out something that, at the moment, I had put considerable thought and effort into.

It's like that sketch of Mischa: once reality hit, it was quite difficult to decide on the next step, whether to repair something that would never quite reach what I envisioned, or to leave it as it is, or to start all over again⁴ (and simply repeat the process of arriving at some unsatisfactory result).

No wonder I don't blog as often as I used to: the better I became, the less I met my expectations.

The average time I need for a post (unless it's a short link blurb) is pretty much one night, i.e. from after dinner to around bedtime. Obviously, considering that I don't appear to be writing several hours' worth of material in any single post, I'm spending most of the time doing other things. It's ironic that Internet access is probably my biggest distraction from blogging (incidentally, most of this post was written on my PDA, without Internet access).

By no means am I quitting the blogging business: there are still plenty of things I want to write about. The question is how I can write about it all without becoming entangled in sidetracks (or convince myself that I don't give a damn about it).

Footnotes⁵

¹ I am quite certain that this was inspired by at least one of the essays I wrote for Charles Barbour's English class.

² I know I know... ...I am well aware that Mischa isn't all that hot IRL (not to mention probably too young for me), but she's absolutely stunning when the lighting and the camera is right (and, I suspect, when Photoshop is used liberally). And just because you see a celebrity in your dreams doesn't mean you want her in the sack.

³ This actually happens quite often when I dream, where my thoughts affect what happens within the dream, but I don't realize it. The funniest case was when I dreamt that I was flying (by flapping my arms), and I was thinking that I usually can only fly in my dreams, but this time I was quite pleased that I was actually flying for real (evidently, the contradiction didn't add up in my head at the time). You can call it “semi-lucid” or “unaware lucid” dreaming.

⁴ Actually, it's not quite the same, since I never contemplated re-doing the Mischa sketch, because I knew that I couldn't, and because my memory was probably a bit confused as to whether I ever had a good Mischa sketch in the first place (during the dream).

⁵ Hey, maybe this is a good way of combining rambling, while maintaining some order in the main entry.