Who does Binge Blogging hurt? Everyone.

Why is it, people often ask me, that you can post on your blog 6 times in a single day during the busiest week of your professional year--about things as trivial as peep dioramas no less--and then post nothing for an entire month after that? Why do your posts always come in such a flurry rather than a slow and steady revelation of the genius of "What's up, Jesus"? Don't you think that you'd have a more dedicated and regular readership if you posted, say, every day or every other day?  What about even shooting for once a week?

In short, yes. I can recognize that I have a problem. And I can admit it.

I am Love-it-or-leav-it and I am a binge blogger.

If you can have patience with me for just a moment, I can explain. Blogging, at least in statistical studies with exactly one subject who is me, requires three things to happen all at the same time:
1) One must have a reasonable block of time free during which
2) There are not other things which seem more immanently important than spewing one's snarky epiphanies into cyberspace in addition to the fact that
3) at that very moment, when the block of time presents itself and there happens a lull in the stream of pressing tasks to tend to, at that VERY moment, one must have something to say that is halfway interesting.

This might not seem like a complex formula, but sometimes it feels like waiting for just the right moment to jump into a session of Double Dutch.*

Many days I wake up with hilarious and profound ideas for the blog. But the day ends before I can find enough time to really sit down and type it out.

Other days I find myself with large blocks of time, but feel I must prioritize other tasks (work, cleaning, connecting with Mr. L, battling garden snails, feeding the dog, etc.)

And sometimes I have big blocks of time and nothing to do, but cannot to save my LIFE muster the motivation or inspiration to tend to the task of writing and so end up slothing on the couch and watching the millionth episode of some mediocre drama streaming on Netflix, not because I really care about it, but because it's easier to keep watching it than get up off my butt and put in a DVD.

But this episodic, Dick-Cheney-buckshot-em-in-the-face style blogging is going to have to stop. Because in addition to being annoying for those dedicated few who have not given up on me and still choose to click here each day to find nothing new (“Still with that peep shit?”), fairly soon there will be bigger fish to fry.**

A few weeks ago, I found out that I had been accepted to a writing workshop this summer that will be taught by some pretty smart and awesome people. I am fairly sure that my acceptance was a complete mistake, but don't want to prove this theory by showing up and sucking it big time. This morning I received an email reminding me that I will actually have to submit some writing before the course, a piece on which others will be expected to “offer feedback.”

Obviously, they forgot to send me the form on which I indicated whether or not I was the type of person who was open to “feedback,” which anyone who knows me can tell you I am not.

After reading this email, I decided that the best plan of action was to FLIP OUT.

My thinking went something a bit like this: feedback?!?? FEEDBACK!???! They want to give me FEEDBACK!??!??! What is this? My own personal hell? (I'm not sure whether or not I was suffering from some delusion about this workshop being about writing in the abstract and not my own writing specifically, but I honestly did find the development about the feedback most shocking and anxiety inducing.)

So I need to majorly turn over a new leaf in terms of writing in a less erratic, spur-of-the-moment, waiting-for-Haley's comet type way.

For now, though, I think Prison Break is on...........

* Remember double dutch from, like, middle school? Also, have you ever seen the really intense jump ropers. I mean INTENSE. I hope you have.

** This is a hilarious and strange phrase, of whose origin I would love to know more.