Thinking Travel

Yes. I’ve been avoiding my blog.

Last Tuesday, on the eve of my hang-out-at-home vacation, I made a want-to-do list of several fun things to accomplish during my time off. Things such as…

• Make bread using new Kitchen-Aide mixer
• Finish the curtains in home office
• Paint toenails
• Make hand-bound journal
• Book flight to Costa Rica
• Upload new photos to Flickr
• BLOG

But what have I done? Grocery shopping, Christmas shopping, shoe shopping, tying up loose ends at work, raking leaves, catching up on sleep…everything except the things I really want to do, like improve my blog.

Well, tonight, as I was ignoring my blog and the rest of my want-to-do list by surfing, two bloggers shed light on why I’ve neglected my vacation want-to-do list.

Penelope over at Brazen Careerist blogged a while back about two types of procrastination: doing nothing & doing a lot. I’ve been doing both in avoiding my blog: I do nothing blog-related as I busy myself with mundane errands.

Why do I do this?

Christine at VisualsSpeak answered that question: The Fear Monster.

As Christine explained, the Fear Monster is

…the one I let torture me when I think about putting my drawings and images out where people can see them.

Yes. Exactly. Creative anxiety. That’s why I’ve been ignoring my blog.

See, I’ve been mulling over some minor changes to my blog a la Problogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project.

But these minor changes scare me big time. Because these changes require me to

put

myself

OUT.

THERE.

For example, day 1 of the project involves emailing a new reader. Well, in order for me to email a new reader, I have to get a new reader to comment. In order to get a new reader to comment, I have to get people to my blog. In order to get people to my blog, I have to tell people about my blog. In order to tell people about my blog, I have to have recent, decent content. In order to have recent, decent content, I have to sit down and write something. In order to sit down and write something, I –

– And here’s where my fear monster shoves car keys in my hand and tells me to drive to Target because we need coffee and paper towels, now!

Again, why?

In the process of writing this post I’ve been asking myself why it’s so scary for me to put myself out in the blog-o-sphere. After all, I’ve published articles, written what is essentially a book, developed and delivered workshops, and spoken in front of 300+ people at a time. I’ve even participated in writing groups where I’ve read my work aloud to a group of talented and much-more-advanced writers.

I don’t have a good answer to this question. But that doesn’t matter right now. Enough is enough. I’m going to take Chrissy’s advice and implement a great new productivity tool: Just Do It Already!!

It’s simply time for me to put myself out there.

So. Here I go.

Putting myself out there.

This is me, putting myself out there.

See you tomorrow.