I Sing My Blog Electric

I was just inspired by an essay by Jonathan Lethem on Harpers.org called The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear, and I know exactly what he means. I think. He's explaining, with marvelous eloquence, how he feels about his long-neglected blog. Again, I think.

When one commits to writing a blog, there's a kind of manic-depression that comes along with it...for me, anyway. There's the manic joy of starting it and the burning excitement of setting off on a new adventure. But then there's the depression that can sometimes come along with the commitment...the depression that rears its ugly head when things start to go off course and the commitment starts to feel more like a burden than a blessing. I feel like a failure when I haven't been kindly, methodically tending my blog. I made a commitment to keep it going, dammit, and any thought of stopping again feels lousy (yet somehow also full of abandon). It's not a job, it's a hobby. It's extra-curricular, it's unnecessary and it's vain, to be truthful. Why should I think people are interested in what I have to say about food let alone any of the blather I'm spouting now?

What I meant to do when I got on my computer 30 minutes ago was to write about how amazing I've felt since going back to 90% raw vegan last Monday. I meant to gush about how much better I sleep and how my jeans are already looser and how I feel like dancing every time I hear music. That's probably more interesting to most people; most of us would rather hear about how we can become better people, right? But instead, I read that essay and felt like anything I would have to say would be useless to anyone who decided to read this and they wouldn't get very far (have you even come this far?) before giving up and opening Facebook in the same tab to see what's new with their other friends.

But that all seems pretty negative, right? And I'm supposed to be saying no to negative these days. My friend Bree says no to negative and by default, she walks around in a bubble of positive all the time. That is seriously great for her, although I don't think she sleeps much. I think there's something healthy about looking at the things one does with one's time and admitting that they aren't necessarily as fruitful as they promised to be when they were newly embarked upon. I'm not saying my blog is like that, ok, maybe I am. I do recall telling myself I would come here every day and say at least something. That didn't happen. I also started out with the intention that it would be mostly about food, and it seems to be going in a completely different direction.

What am I trying to say?

I think that blogs are weird. I think they're selfish and indulgent and over-used and I'm totally guilty of all three of those charges. I have no more reason to be blogging than you or my neighbor or the homeless woman sleeping in my "secure" Bank of America ATM location. In fact, if she were to blog, I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what I have to say.

By the way: Don't those people on the subway know I can hear their music coming through the outside of their earbuds? Don't they know how annoying they are and how silly they look? It takes all the mystery out of closing yourself off from the world with headphones when people can hear you jamming out to Barry Manilow. Doesn't Apple know about this problem?

But I digress. I bet this all still sounds negative, but the funny thing is, I've been much more positive and open to everything around me this week and this current spouting of ideas is just a symptom of that gift. Eating foods straight from the earth; organic raw fruit and vegetables and grains has completely (en)lightened me. Again. There's nothing in the world more effective and lasting than massively clearing all the clutter from the inside. Processed foods cause physical inner clutter and I've rid myself of that burden in so short a time. I've done this before and, again, committed myself to it for life, but then life gets in the way and can sometimes turn all our commitments upside down and dump them out into the rubbish bin. This time, like the last time, I felt amazing the second day and even though I had some major detox symptoms (my legs killed!)I felt more on top of the world than I have since the last time I was this clean. I still feel the lightness and the energy; it never really goes away unless I revert back to my old habits, which I've certainly done more than once before, but always hope to not do again. That space and energy makes room for the free-flow of thoughts and inspiration and here tonight's thoughts land, on this post, on my blog, for all to see.

If you have the time and want to read some amazing blogiture, check out the essay that spawned this schizophrenic post:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/0082674
And look for my next post which will be about, well, I really don't know.
Enjoy!

I'm Back and I'm Proud

You probably (haven't) noticed that I've been absent for the past (almost) Month. That's because every spare moment I had to be on the computer I was writing a friggin' novel, people. Yes I was! Woot! And here's a little shout out to my girl Dana Reiland who introduced me to it, kept me motivated up to the very end and who also won the contest. Vanilla Shake, baby.

I've never been a part of something like National Novel Writing Month before. I don't even know why it appealed to me. Well, that's not true. I've always thought writing a novel would be neat, but with all the other things I'm doing that I think are neat, it just wasn't on the top of the list.

Enter NaNoWriMo; the perfect excuse to open the laptop and spend lots and lots of time typing for no other reason than getting words out; 50,000 of them to win. That's the concept of NaNoWriMo, just to write write write without preconceptions or judgements or perfectionist tendencies. Just take the risk, go for it, feel it out, if it sucks deal with it later, get it out with abandon. (Sounds kind of like acting... hmm...)

And I did it, my people! It has nothing to do with food. It's a fantasy about parallel universes and it has faeries and witches and talking mirrors and cute boys and lots of forests and fog and horses. And it's the first in a series. Who knows what happens from here, but I'm definitely going to take the next month to fix and revise it. Then maybe I'll start an alternate blog and post a chapter a week or something. Or maybe try to get it published, even though I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about that.

But what matters most is that I accomplished this thing that seemed so abstract and wild when I first sat down to an empty Word document. The higher my word count got, the more invested I became and it essentially came down to a race with myself. I was writing upwards of 6k words a day and one day I wrote almost 10k. That, my people, is insane. Especially when I'm a busy-ish working person!

So here's a "hello again" from being on vacation in novel land. I'm back and I promise I'm going to post about food next time. Also, I've been full-on vegetarian since my last post. Yes, even over Thanksgiving.

Here's to me and Dana and all the other Wrimos who accomplished something amazing. We did it y'all and I'm so proud!!!

http://www.NaNoWriMo.org