No Pressure, or To Blog or Not to Blog, or Let’s Be Friends

March 18, 2014 by Lissa Marie Niederer 4 Comments

Boy, when you sign up for one of these blog thingies, they sure don’t waste any time, do they? It’s like, Hi, we have your email, choose a pretty flower picture, now WRITE something.

No pressure, right? And yet, there is this definite sense of pressure as I look at the blank blog entry because this is my first ever post! Isn’t it supposed to be spectacularly important somehow, or at least informational? Am I supposed to tell you who I am? What I do? Where I came from? Am I supposed to choose only one thoughtful, descriptive title? Because I chose three. You can pick which one you like the best and pretend that is what I wrote. Okay? Okay.

I didn’t really want to start a blog, for a number of reasons. #1. I’m kind of a perfectionist. It took me an aeon to write my first novel because I would write one sentence and then edit it to death before moving onto the next one. Starting a blog feels scarily time-consuming, considering my anal-retentiveness when it comes to “finishing” a book/chapter/paragraph/sentence. (Is anal-retentive a swear? I hope not.) Starting a blog also makes me feel scarily vulnerable, which leads me to reason #2. Starting a blog makes me feel vulnerable. This is kind of like my little lupine-clad diary from when I was eleven, except there’s no cheap miniature padlock on it to make me feel like my secrets are safe. For some deranged reason, I have been convinced that my thoughts will be interesting to the faceless general public that is cyberspace. But, what if they don’t like me??! my inner voice is screaming right now. They jimmied my plastic padlock with a bobby pin!  #3. I don’t have a ton of spare time. (Like anybody does, right?) I’m a wife, stay-at-home mother with three very smart, adorable kiddos, a first-time Christian novelist in the middle of the very long process of getting published, and a part time employee at a children’s discovery museum. Some days I wonder if I will have time to find a pair of matching socks, let alone write a blog entry x-number of times a week.

But, all that being said, there are a number of reasons to blog also, and lately, the proposition has been rearing its head every time I turn around. With a new book coming out, it will be fun to document the process, and maybe connect with others who are on similar journeys. Getting in the practice of writing something on a more regular basis can’t be a bad thing, right? WRITE something! And perhaps opening the diary of my no-longer-eleven-year-old-self will help stretch me in ways I haven’t thought of yet. I read a quote by Dr. Steve Maraboli on Facebook this morning that said, in part, “You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.” I don’t really know who Dr. Maraboli is, but the quote spoke to me. It’s like my irrepressible need to rearrange a room in our house every few months. Aren’t we all trying to be better? Day by day? So, stick with me while I stumble through this, huh? Let’s be friends.