Blogs, Generally

I'm five hours away from home, groggy from a terrible cold and medicine I've taken to get me through. I have a cup of decaf for my throat which was so sore that swallowing woke me at four and wouldn't let me get back to sleep. I'm far from home, up early, and laid low by this cold, but have done my three Morning Pages and know the day will get better.

Yesterday, in Cait Flanders' newsletter, was this passage about blogs:

I've been craving stories. Journeys to follow. Even just the "boring" (NOT BORING) updates we used to share on blogs. Like what are you thinking about right now? What have you been curious enough to actually learn more about? And where are the BEGINNERS!? Where are the people who are raising their hands and saying "I have no idea what I'm doing, but here's what I'm attempting and my progress so far"? I miss those days. Blogging was actually fun, back then.

I get that. Almost all the blogs and newsletters I read are very focused and the writer is an expert (if not the expert) on that idea. This is how one builds a platform (ugh) and a following (ugh), through specific focus such as on living frugally, being much more Zen, or retiring early to name a few I have been reading. These are good for now, but I wonder if, like subscribing to Runners World, that focus wears thin. I could only subscribe to that rag for eight months before the same damn run your fastest 5K! article would make me puke.

My interests are general and so I enjoy Austin Kleon's and Alan Jacobs' writings which focus on the lives of their writers. Thoreau was focused on his living near Walden, but really it's a memoir of living. I like memoir. I like blogs that feel like listening to a friend. My friend is a photographer, but that's only a slice of what we discuss. Then there are Genesis, turntables, our shared history, the Thousand Islands, parents and wives, geology, writing, books, friends, and whatever else we think of.

Go back to the magazine comparison. I like The New Yorker and The New York Times, and I love The Sun because they talk about most everything. There are themes and a feel to each, but they range all over. That's what I like and so, this far anyway, that's what I write.

I have my own recurring themes: Morning Pages, reading, teaching, schools, running, and so on, but there isn't just one thing the blog is about.

I'm unlikely to build much of a following or platform that way, but then again, who's to say? I think of the blog like Morning Pages and I'm on the last few lines of page one of three, about to flip over to a clean, blank page two. It's early in the morning. I have only the slightest idea what I will say on pages two and no idea how the thing will end. It's a journey, an exploration, a way of learning. I'm a beginner. I'm by no means the expert, though I'm feeling more confident in my expertise about a few things and maybe they will become the focal points.

I should go. The coffee and medicine have eased some of the pain in my throat. I've done Morning Pages (about how to do Morning Pages away from home) and written this post. It's time to see what else the day has to offer and what I might want to think about next. This is just the beginning.

Can It Be So Simple?

I woke this morning after a very bad night's sleep. It was four-forty. I turned off the alarm but lay there until five thinking, "I just can't." Everything, including getting up to pee, felt impossible.

Then I got up.

Maybe it was the urge to pee, but I think it was the pages. Though I want to know the reasons for everything, it probably doesn't matter. I got up. I peed, showered, and pulled on clothes. I went downstairs and considered coffee. Not today. I took my pen down to the basement nook to write Morning Pages.

That required:

• Three pages of blank, lined paper
• My favorite pen
• Forty five minutes

That's it. Well, that and faith that I can fill three pages freely and that doing so may benefit me and the people I love.

Morning Pages aren't complicated. Get out of bed, pick up a pen, lay out three pages and start writing. Don't stop until the bottom of the third page. Tomorrow morning do it again. It's enough to get you out of bed. And if that won't do it, your bladder will.

Sick In Bed

Woke this morning with a headache at three in the morning. Go back to sleep, I told myself. I tried to relax my closed eyes but clenched them against the ache, bringing it on even more of course.

I woke next at ten to four, headache still there. A not-so-dull aching that pulsed with my slowly beating heart. I remembered signs on the highway saying that if I'm having a stroke say, take me to Crouse. In the midst of a stroke I doubt I'd speak or think so clearly. I drifted deep into that thought.

The alarm sounded at four-forty. I turned it off and closed my eyes against the headache and the morning. My stomach felt clenched. The word swoopy came to mind. What does that even mean? I wondered. I lay there, swoopy, for half an hour, my head beating like a second hand.

Out of bed just after five I went downstairs. The cat said it was time for food. No deal. Learn to read a clock, I told her. She meowed in time with my headache and the swirl of my stomach. I skipped coffee, grabbed my pen, and went down to the basement nook to write my Morning Pages.

I wrote about whether or not I could make it to my job and through the school day. My headache made its argument, my stomach concurred. I finished the three pages, went upstairs to the computer, wrote and sent in lesson plans.

That done, I returned to bed with the computer thinking I might write. I got as far as the title of this then, squinting at the screen, felt myself sliding, maybe falling. I set aside the computer, lay down, closed my eyes, and tried not to count the beating of my pulse through the ache in my head. Last I saw, the clock said 7:55.

Then it was eight-thirty-something, then quarter to ten, and finally ten minutes to noon. The headache had mostly dissipated. My stomach was still off balance. I got out of the bed, changed out of pajamas into khakis and a sweater. I went down and ate a toasted bagel, drank a cup of decaf, sat on the couch and read for an hour and a half.

Then I picked up the computer again. I had the urge to write something. Who knows what? It wasn't this. This came much later, after dinner, when the headache had begun its return. I wondered what the point of it was, the long writing I had done in the afternoon, this shorter piece at night. It had me thinking of the Morning Pages. My 1,735th day in a row of doing them. That number has to mean something. Maybe with a clear head and stomach I would be able to say what that is. Probably not, but when I'm feeling sick and so unsure, it's nice to think that all I need is a clean bill of health and the mysteries of the world will open enough for me to write them down.

Until then, I'm going back to bed.

Prayer & Writing

I don't want to complain too much. Talking about my job and how ill-suited to it I have become is worth only a certain number of pixels and I've exceeded that number. I'm sure I'll go deeper into the red on that, but here I want to talk about falling behind, feeling rushed, and the accompanying feelings for writing. Some call this writer's block, but it's something else entirely.

In the few moments I've had for writing the last three days not much has happened. I've been tired, rushed, and doubtful about any of my ideas. This isn't writer's block. I just lacked faith and didn't have time to let writing take me back into the land of believing.

These things happen.

Though I haven't written a blog post every day, each morning I wake early and write three Morning Pages by hand. No one will ever see those pages. I wrote them for myself and just to be writing.

Morning Pages are one way to keep in the habit of writing and that daily practice builds faith. I imagine it like prayer for the doubtful and am reminded of this Thomas Merton prayer:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I replace God with writing and think of Morning Pages as a kind of prayer. I fall behind in publishing the blog and assembling pieces for submission, but I return to the daily practice of the pen, the pages, and the act of writing. "I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire" and trust that I will, someday and in some way I may not yet understand, find a lasting rhythm that carries me through my days.

Given that I began this day, as I have every day for almost five years, filling Morning Pages, maybe I already have.