Finding the light

I get stuck under the weight of over thinking, generally and specifically. Can I write about topic x, or will so and so read it and get hurt/mad?? I can spew out several paragraphs in the blink of an eye in response to a fb post, but it's so easy when my buttons get pushed.

I read this last night. I think If I keep reading it every day, I'll be able to fill some space here.

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March 16, 2010
WHY A BLOG?
Posted by Susan Orlean

To misquote Chico Marx, who posed the enduring existential question “Why a duck?,” I can’t help but ask, Why a blog? Why a blog at all, and why a blog rather than print, and why me? Now, as I prepare to launch Free Range, I offer these attempts to answer:

1. Why not? Writers like to write, and writing in different forms—short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention—all interest me.

2. I love print, and always will. I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing. But I also think there’s a place in the world for something that takes advantage of the immediacy the Internet allows—namely, that you can form a thought, type it out, and within no time broadcast it to the world. In particular, there ought to be a place for thoughts and observations that are too small to develop into a magazine story, or so fleeting that they would evaporate by the time they could be put into print, or so particular (an ongoing observation, an unspooling thread of an idea) that they would feel out of place in a magazine. These all seem to fit quite snugly into a blog.

3. Why me? Well, I seem to have lots of those blog-sized thoughts, but never had anywhere to air them before. (I just never could get the hang of graffiti.)

After Chico raised his duck question, he went on to ask another, even more profound one: “Why-a no chicken?” To this, Groucho replied, “Well, I don’t know why-a no chicken. I’m a stranger here myself.” I know the feeling. I’m a stranger here in blogland myself, but I’m looking forward to the visit.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/susanorlean/?xrail#ixzz0ko9dwMGn