Writing Through an Existential Crisis.

I had every intention of blogging every day in 2016, every intention of tracking all my media consumption, every intention of writing my second book. Like decent baseball players, I batted .333 last year for those goals (yay, NaNoWriMo!), but now it’s a new year and time to reassess.

I haven’t had much of a focus on my blog ever. It started as a place to review movies on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, then morphed into a place to vent during grad school, then shifted into a bit of a diary with some educational pieces thrown in from time to time.

I’m not sure how to rebrand at this point, or if I even want to. As a memoirist, this has been a space to force me to craft snapshots of my life in a way that might engage readers, perhaps even make them think. It’s been a place to rant about everything from religion to politics to feminism to mental health to education. But recently, I’ve been wondering if those snapshots reveal too much. When someone googles me and this is the first hit, what can someone learn about me in mere minutes? I always assume the only people reading are my mom and Stueve, but what if they aren’t the only ones reading? Then again, with the sheer volume of content available online, isn’t my little corner of the sky just mostly static?

I’m not sure what the answer is, if there’s an answer at all. I know I love writing. I know my writing is not a hobby. I know I need to write for the same reasons I need to breathe–it gives me life. I know I’m working on a sustainable schedule for blogging this year, something that might strike more of a balance of sharing those snapshots of my life with a dash of restraint. I know I hope to have that schedule ready to go this weekend.

So as the trite writing advice goes, I’ll just write what I know, and hope from there I can figure out what needs to happen next.

If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.

 

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