i’m struggling with something and since this is the world wide web i thought, “what better place to share your struggles and problems than world wide?” there’s a thought completely devoid of logic for you. but in this case it makes sense.

i’m suffering, interweb. suffering. i have this weird writer’s block thing going on. it’s not that i don’t have anything to write about. i do. i have tons of things to say. lots of stuff has been happening. matt and i just got back from a week long trip to montana with the boys. i took over a thousand pictures on that trip. we drove so there’s a pictography of our voyage through washington, idaho and montana. we went to the national bison range. flathead lake. we visited an absolutely awesome museum in polson, montana. we saw a stunning sunset over the columbia river gorge and got it all on film.

before that, a kid on a bike was hit by a car in front of our house. my brother and his wife were visiting at the time. we were having a heated bowling tournament on the wii in my living room when we heard the screeching tires and screams from outside the window. it was very scary & exciting stuff.

speaking of scary and the wii, that’s been an unexpected surprise around here. kaileb got it for his birthday in may and it’s caused a stir in the whole, extended family. even my nearly seventy year old father has caught the bug. every time he visits now he says, “i want to play baseball!” it’s a sight to see him swinging that little wii-mote around with his tongue hanging out in earnest concentration. i have photographic evidence! every time we get together with my brother and sister-in-law we have very serious bowling competitions — when deanna and i can convince matt & jay to stop golfing with it long enough to give us a turn. there’s even a cooking game that has me cursing at the screen, “i’m stirring as hard as i can, you stupid piece of shitake mushroom!” to the amusement of jacob & kaileb who have had to endure me giving them the, “if you can’t play it without getting mad, don’t play it at all” speech a million times. i’ve been meaning to post about that, complete with pictures, for some time now.

i’ve also had a few rants to spew about immigration reform, paris hilton and the media in general. some preeettty choice rants, my friend.

i like to write. it’s a weird thing with me. i don’t care if i have an audience of one or a million or even zero. sometimes i just like to sit and spill whatever nonsense floats around my brain onto paper or keyboard, just to see where it takes me. this site is useful for that. it gives me a place to practice this where i might actually stick with it in some manageable capacity. everything is categorized and archived. that’s harder to do with a steno pad, although the lure of a nice fresh tablet is overwhelming at times as well. i still do a fair bit of writing on paper. it’s romantic. i idealize it. i crave it sometimes.

but here’s the thing: matt keeps telling me to write here, encouraging me to post more often. i’d like to. and sometimes i do. when i can think of something worthy to say. i try not to bore the population at large — at least the ones who might stumble on this page — with inane dribble about the eating habits of my dogs. even if they’re highly entertaining to me. i recognize not everyone is as enamored with poe’s appetite as i.

there are stretches of time when i can’t step away from the keyboard. my mind is racing with things i want to write down. looking up, i see a total of five draft posts i started writing and never finished. or finished but never edited. or edited but never published. they stare down at me and haunt me. but look, if i don’t publish something right away the likelihood of me ever publishing it diminishes. mainly because i have time to reconsider. i go back and reread what i’ve written and in a bout of self doubt i decide it’s all junk, not worth reading. but having worked so hard to write it in the first place, i can’t just delete it. so there it sits. unpublished. unedited. just drafts. with no one to read them because like i said, it’s not that i don’t have anything to say. there’s a lot going on, some of it even worth talking about. maybe.

matt’s my number one fan and it’s my favorite thing about him. so it’s nice that he pushes me to write. i get the place where he’s coming from on this one. the drafts are useful in this case. i can pretend to write entries and never publish them. he’s happy. nobody gets the belt. see?

so we understand:

• there’s been a lot going on so i’ve got lots of good material at my disposal.
• matt likes my writing, wants me to write and thinks i should have a pulitzer by now but will settle for a more recent blog posting.
• i like to write and i wouldn’t mind writing more often on here as it’s a good tool for doing so.

nothing should stop me from updating more regularly. it’s just that i can’t — that i don’t — that i’m not sure what i should say.

i blame the web. the very same utility that facilitates my writing in the first place. everywhere i look i see people railing against the blog. blah blah blah blahg. and i can’t say i blame them. everybody and their dog has a blog by now. mine is nothing special. there’s certainly nothing about it that sets it apart from the rest. a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project found that every 5.8 seconds someone starts a new blog. (there’s a lot of other interesting data on their site too. i’d recommend checking it out if you’re a numbers person.) every 6 seconds! that’s a lot of bloggin’ goin’ on. now, of course, you have to stop and consider the fact that the majority of those won’t stick around. they’ll just be a flash in the pan. it’s trendy and fun and a lot of people think they’ll stick with it. a lot of people think they’ll stick with the gym and the book of the month club, too. it doesn’t happen. but still. there’s an asswad of weblogs out there.

by logic, this translates into too much of a good (and sometimes terribly confusing wrongawfulbad) thing. and following, logically, is a backlash. the backlash comes in the form of sarcasm and snide jokes. sarcasm and snide jokes are the realm of the teenager in high school. hence, i feel like i’m back in high school. ergo, i cannot write.

see? it all makes perfect sense! logically speaking. i don’t understand why matt can’t get it.

okay. i’ll explain a little better. all i’ve been hearing/reading lately is how everybody has a blog. “all everybody’s blog talks about is their dog. or their kids. or their kid’s dogs. or what they had for lunch or something lame or boring like that. and plus? they’re always telling us what think about stuff and stuff. always with their opinions and ideas and they think they’re so creative and funny and interesting. pah!” and so then i got all defensive and was like, “well, ah i uh, you know. i didn’t mean to imply that i might — i’m not — uhm.” so now i don’t want to write. cause — you know. i don’t want anyone to think i’m all uppity and shit. or i don’t want to bore anybody.

which is really kind of retarded when you think about it, right? if i pay for a domain name and do all the work of designing a website and maintaining it with content since 2005, then who am i hurting? i’m not exactly kidnapping people and forcing them to read it, right? if someone should happen to stumble on it by accident i’m not infecting their computer or their eyes with offensive porn or viruses. they have the power to stumble elsewhere. i’ve been hiding out, refusing to update because “they” might be offended or put out by some keystrokes of my laptop. it’s stupid, really. first of all, i’m not really sure who “they” are and secondly, why should “they” be? i hold no delusions of grandeur and i make no comparison, but really, what would have happened had bukowski said, “i shouldn’t even attempt to write this book. no one will want to read about my inane adventures.”

i don’t want to get all hokey, touch-feely. but for real, yo. the web is the future. haha! i couldn’t even type that without laughing. it sounded like an after school special tagline! and matt just goes, “haha are you still writing about writer’s block!?” so we were both laughing, but about different things. which is weird. and it’s also weird that this is such a long post, but it’s about writer’s block. but anyway. what was i saying about inane dribble? oh yeah! the web is the future. i sound like paris hilton right now, i realize. but i am going somewhere with this. (i am totally fighting the urge to start the next sentence with, “because, like”)

entertainment, the arts– it’s all going online. like it or lump it, it’s the way it’s headed. if it doesn’t end up that way a lot of it is starting out there. being discovered there. again, i’m not talking about me and i stake no claim to talent. i’m just saying it IS out there. i’ve seen it. and it’s beautiful. and it doesn’t come from celebrities. it doesn’t come from the people we know and recognize in gossip rags at the checkout line. it comes from people we’ve never seen and probably never will. it comes from people with little to no budget and humble surroundings. it comes from little people with enormous dreams and infinite potential. it’s amazing and while some of it shocks and scares me, disappoints me and makes me feel like bleaching my eyeballs, it all makes me proud to be a part of it. i’m proud to be a part of the generation who gets to build on this creation, contribute to it. my contribution may be small. it may be unnoticed by the majority and it may be unappreciated by most. it may lack the polish and popularity of the rest, but it’s mine and “they” don’t get to determine what or how much or when. this is not high school and that goose is long since cooked.

that doesn’t mean doubt and anxiety will just vanish. the trick is to just write and post, write and post. i can’t stop and think about what “they” might say about the quality or the subject matter of my writing if “they” should stumble on my site. i just have to do it. i have to pull the trigger. ready? we’ll do it together. one. two. three. GO!

in case you were wondering, this should remove any doubt about my mental state, but i couldn’t hold the crazy in any longer.