Whatever I want - Part 1

I've been asked the question, What do you want to do with your blog?, and maybe there's no short answer. Then again, perhaps there is. The short answer would be, whatever I want. The short answer with an attitude comes to mind when I'm asked that question with an attitude that seems to suggest I'm doing something wrong with writing my thoughts, in my voice, and that I should be doing so differently, is whatever the fuck I want. I created this blog as an outlet to get me writing - and in any number of ways that I might want to.

 I'll be the first to say that I constantly reassess this blog and the things I write about - believe me, there's a shit ton of drafts with all kinds of stuff, some of which seemed like a great idea until I started writing it out and bored myself to tears, some of which just needs a bit of breathing time. Yeah, whatever I want, and I shouldn't have to justify that. That very notion is something I stole from two of my coworkers, both of whom also write - and blog, and quite well, I might add. Emelie and Alayna, I'm talkin' bout you two - because the first few times I read things you wrote about, it hit me like a ton of flippin' bricks, the notion of writing about whatever I want to write about. This blog is, therefore, a place. A place where I can write about whatever crosses my mind and moves me enough to write about it - a bit of a sketchbook for words and thoughts. If anyone doesn't like reading it, well....it's not like anyone is standing there with a gun to your head forcing you to read it. Go read something you like, or better still, go write something you like. Comment if you like - I love hearing what people like about it, I'm okay with hearing what someone didn't like about it - but if you're going to elaborate on what you didn't like about it, I'm going to wonder why you spent so much time focusing on what you didn't like. I'm the type of person who walks away from what I don't like, or finds something to like if I have to stay. Sometimes what I write about could suck, sometimes my writing could suck as well - but the point is, I'm writing. Someone told me something a few months ago - they wrote it on their copy of their credit card voucher and they left it for me:

Writers aren't authors without an audience.

 Boom. Deep, I know. Here's the thing: looking at my stats, both on this site and the tracking site I use, I have an audience - and one that's growing more all the time. Boggles my mind a bit, the things that drive my readership up, and way up. Yup, this blog is a place for me to write, about whatever moves me to do so. There are any number of reasons why this is a very, very good thing - for me, hopefully sometimes for others. I've had two very positive remarks in the last week, both of which mean a lot to me because they were made in a manner that made it easy for me to see that both individuals, and these are two people that I have a lot of respect and admiration for, thought about what I had to say and appreciated it. More than that, both of these people get why I do it. When anyone gets the why of what you do and genuinely appreciates that aspect of it, it's wonderful. It makes me want to continue, it makes me want to improve - and it makes me enjoy the process, even if I struggle, and sometimes fail at improving.

Constructive criticism? I'm okay with that. Critics as a whole? Hmm, perhaps not so much. I say that because what comes to mind is how someone can go on and on about not liking something and how the longer that process goes on, the more I just think, Dude! - if you really don't like something so much, then do everyone a favor and get the F away from it, unless you're an editor who is going to pay me for it, and therefore sees something worth fixing, move on to something you actually like. If you can do it better, than by all means, do that if you want. I tend not to publish the comments that are nothing but insults - whether they come anonymously or someone actually identifies themselves, and thankfully, there haven't been a lot of those.

This is a place, an outlet - for what I want to talk/write about. What I like, when I like it. Here is where I write when I feel like it, and if I rather like what I chose to write about, well then I just might like to click the orange button that says, "Publish" - and if I don't like it at some point, I can delete it. That's what I like about...