A great thing about a blog is that you can’t be rejected. I can write as I want, I can even be dead wrong, and can still hit “Publish.”
Most likely, few if anyone will read it but it’s still out there. I hesitate to call myself an author, but… the button is labeled “Publish.” It doesn’t matter how small and untrammeled this corner of the interwebs is. I can even be far more opinionated than I am in real life.
I don’t have deadlines. I write when I want and about what I want. I mean, I do impose an informal deadline on myself, but I can’t be fired if I miss it.
I felt guilty missing my personal deadline last week. I was aware of it, naturally, but had too much going on to address it. I had nothing written and no ideas for anything, so when I realized my self-imposed deadline was upon me, I ignored it.
And I felt guilty.
Why did I feel guilt of all emotions? To whom do I owe a post? I don’t receive any revenue from this. If you see advertisements, it’s all going WordPress, Inc (or whatever they’re called, I can’t be bothered to look it up). Not a penny to me. I don’t even post affiliate links.
So why feel guilty?
I think it’s a sense of responsibility. And, mind you, I don’t think anyone stays by their device every week, breathlessly waiting for me to post. At least, I hope not. If so, please start a hobby or something worthwhile. But if I put a responsibility upon myself then it will weigh on me until it’s discharged. The strangest thing is: I don’t know where that comes from. It was not behavior drilled into me by my parents, or school. As far back as I can remember, I made sure to discharge my obligations, even when doing so was inconvenient. I’ve always held back from what I really wanted in order to meet obligations, whether externally imposed or otherwise.
It’s a vicious cycle. If I ignore it, I feel bad. If I do it, I suffer some loss (perhaps small, perhaps not).
I began this blog because I felt like I had never fully engaged in one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet: the act of putting my thoughts into the public sphere. I remember the rise of blogging and the early web. I held back from it then (obligations to other things, of course). I censored myself and rejected my ideas as being irrelevant, perhaps even contemptible. Now I can choose to not post. I’m working on the guilt part, but I found it faded as I got further from the deadline.
Now I can just post my thoughts, if I so choose.
Now I am unrejectable.
