My absence: explained (Alternate title: Excuses)

Where to begin? Over a month ago I wrote about not writing and about submitting my earlier blog posts to my creative writing group for feedback. Since then? Silence. Here are a few reasons why.

I have been busy?
I can't say for sure that this is actually true, but seems a logical enough explanation. There was the Super Bowl (I picked wrong) and I threw a huge party for that. There was the creative writing meeting...and the next creative writing meeting. Just the other night the Oscars (!), for which I also hosted a big party (look for more Oscar-related commentary in my next post...hopefully). I have been working, I have been visiting friends, I have been working. Sure, I have been busy.

I was intimidated?
My writing group was great to give me feedback, and while none of it was "bad" per say, our discussions on blogging made me a little gun shy (yes, I just used the phrase "gun shy"). Apparently the first rule of blogging (like the first rule of Fight Club, only not) is never to blog about blogging. Well, you may have noticed, I do this a lot. The second rule...is never to blog about blogging (okay, enough with the FC references). The third rule (for argument's sake) is to ground one's blog thematically, making it more accessible and identifiable for (potential) readers.

So I stopped blogging for several weeks, having decided that my blog was going nowhere. That is until I realized that destination: nowhere was probably what I loved most about my silly little blog with a Buffy-quote title and my longtime Buffy screen name (buffyslayergal) embedded neatly in the URL, despite the blog not really being about Buffy at all.

Perhaps one day I will better structure my thoughts and random popcult/insecure author/personal tidbit postings, or expand into additional blogs to allow more room for these (and other) topical presentations, but today is not that day. Today I will talk about anything, everything and nothing and not really care about everyone else. I hope I am not doing so out of some inborn fear of criticism. I think it was my mistake bringing my escapist, meandering drivel to a group of (seriously) talented up-and-coming writers. It was also my own fault for not producing a submission that month in the vein of what was expected, i.e. creative writing. There is nothing creative about this blog. And that's what makes it so easy.

There was nothing to blog about?
Okay, this is probably the least true statement of the three. It would have made sense to follow-up my earlier NFL blogs with some sort of pre- or post-Super Bowl discussion/rant/prediction piece. And it certainly would have made sense to more carefully blog the time leading up to the Oscars (though, for reasons which I will outline later, I could not have posted my picks in advance). Given the Buffy references dotting the peripheries of this blog, I was also inclined to live-blog my minute-by-minute impressions of the Pilot of Joss's new show, Dollhouse (which I still might do, in retrospect). I guess the only truth to this explanation is that, while there were things to blog about, I was concerned that there were no new things to blog about, and my football posts were becoming repetitive, and my award season posts were becoming repetitive, and so on.

I didn't want to blog about not blogging
So if I have openly decided not to follow the cardinal rule of Fight Club blogging, I refuse to ignore the rule-I-have-just-made-up about blogging about not blogging, or spending all of one's time apologizing for not writing sooner or more or more frequently, etc. I used to do this a lot when I kept a diary (I have no idea why) and it has resulted in page after page of me never really saying anything. If I don't really care about the quality, focus or content of my blog, then I shouldn't really care how often I engage in the act of blogging.

Convinced?