This isn’t a scheduling question. It’s a content question.
What do you write when you want to write, but what sits in front of you is not for public airing?
You could argue that hasn’t stopped lots of people – in fact, there’d be precious little reality TV without it.
But reality TV is planned for entertainment. Which can also mean embarrassment, hurt, humiliation, and so on.
Those who know me well will tell you that I have a very low embarrassment threshold for others.
I walk out of TV comedies when they are too mocking. I avoid some sitcoms because they are just too cringy, just too keen on milking it.
So I think about what I write – because others will read it. I can’t control what they think, I don’t plan to, but I equally don’t plan to set up others that I write about.
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For a long time, I wrote about things, mostly. Places I’d been. Foods I was passionate about. Experiences. Moments.
Obviously those things didn’t happen completely in isolation – there were other people involved. I just wasn’t necessarily including them in what I wrote. All very first person.
Little by little, I have come to write more about others – particularly where they offer inspiration, a different perspective and so on.
Sometimes, that comes very easily. And sometimes, it leaves me with very little to write about, because what is in front of me is not what I want to go into a blog post.
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I am still trying to figure this one out. There was a long period of time where I didn’t write on the blog at all, because what occupied me was not for open sharing.
After a bit, I found a way to come back. I set myself little challenges for writing. I picked different subjects; I tried to write regularly.
It was good. I enjoyed it. Some of you were kind enough to read the posts. I kept going.
Sometimes life turns again, and you find yourself in a season where you are asking yourself once more: what do I write when…?
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I like a bit of chat about books, kids’ books especially, and I do that. Food is always a handy topic. You know the familiar suspects.
But sometimes, even for those, you need a clearer head to write. That’s harder right now.
I don’t have a fix for a clear head – other than books and TV for escape, and a certain determination to protect my free time.
But anyway. I don’t want to back off again; to find that lots of time has gone by without writing. It makes it harder to begin again.
And when writing is (often) a way of settling thoughts and feelings, I don’t want to lose that opportunity.
Even if I’m scrabbling for what to tell you.
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I did make trifle. That counts, doesn’t it?
It was good, too.