March 18: Blog Stress, Mediocre Post, "Rye" Dip

I have a confession:  I suffer from blog stress.

Every morning, when I sit down at my laptop to type my first post of the day, I try to come up with a topic that's thought-provoking or funny.  I worry about it, stress over it.  It's absolutely ridiculous.  I know I can't post something amazing every time I sit down to write.  Statistically, it's impossible.  I have written over 1,200 posts for Saint Marty.  I'm sure that, if I took the time to review some of my older posts, I would develop a migraine.  My eyes might even start bleeding.  I write an average of 14 posts a week.  If I'm lucky, I may come up with an amazing piece of writing every couple of weeks.  If I'm lucky.

So I'm going to try to alleviate my blog stress.  I'm not going to shoot for amazing every time I write a post.  I'm going to shoot for adequate to mediocre.  By lowering my expectations, I may enjoy blogging a whole lot more.  Heck, maybe I'll stop proofreading.  (OK, I'm lying there.  I can't stand blogs with a whole bunch of grammar and spelling mistakes.  It turns me off.)  However, I might, on occasion, allow myself to write something that I would categorize as (to use the technical term) shitty.

Now, those disciples out there who've been following me for a while may notice no change in the quality of my writing.  That will probably be due to the fact that I've been writing shitty posts all along, without even realizing it.  In that case, I'm just embracing my shitty-ness.  I'm becoming one with it.  That's a good thing, as well.

I'm supposed to do a Rye dip this morning.  Again, in the past, I've tried to ask serious, life-changing questions on prior Mondays.  Not today.  Today, my question is,

Will this post be shitty?

And Holden Caulfield's answer is,

Anyway, we danced about four numbers, and then I turned off the radio.  Old Phoebe jumped back in bed and got under the covers.  "I'm improving, aren't I?" she asked me.

There you go.  That little passage says it all.  It isn't about being perfect every time.  It's about improving, dance-by-dance, step-by-step, post-by-post.

Saint Marty can live with that piece of wisdom.

Amen.