Try as I may, I have to admit that my blogging habit runs in spurts, or more aptly, sprints. I write voraciously for a week or two, then like a distance runner who mysteriously hits the wall, I sit down on a curb to rest, only to come to my senses a week later and realize I forgot to get up and continue the race.

I could bore you into a nice slumber with all the reasons why I did something other than blog these last five or so days, but the truth can be more simply explained: life got in the way. As I’m gearing up to hustle freelance writing this year, organizing my working space, creating a site to extols the virtue of paying me money to massage words, and generally trying to shake off the idle bliss of the long holiday break, doing anything consistently is more of a challenge that it used to be. It seems the longer one falls away from the habit of being productive, e.g., getting up everyday early to prepare for the office, the longer it takes to get back on that flea-bitten nag we all ride called Routine.

Unfortunately the nature of blog readers is often fickle: post often and consistently and they sit at your doorstep like alley cats for the next handout; post irregularly and they fade like strangers in a bar you bought a round for when they discover you’re out of cash. But, one does only what one can, and in the grand scheme of things (translation: importance) blog writing is mostly an experiment, and consistent blogging a luxury.

There’s no doubt I vacillate on what I’m writing here with some days being thoughtful introspections while others days sharing stuff giggled up about some irony of life encountered. I’d like to say I know the broad subjects I’d like to write here, but my tongue would be getting in the way of the truth. I’d like to state that inkmusings is about “x, y, and often z” but again, I’m almost the last to know what I’m about to write.

The bottom line is that I write here for exercise, for strengthening voice, and at times, to entertain. I don’t write here under a deadline, threat of losing income if I don’t post, or with any pretense of impressing anyone (other than my worst critic, which is of course, moi). I do write here, however, because I enjoy it and see the long-term benefit of more consistent free-writing than I usually have in what passes for writing-for-pay on most days. And so for that reason I’ll continue, consistency be damned.

Years ago when I signed on at work and questioned how long the boss (translation: key man for the biz) intended to keep working, he replied, “I’ll work as long as I enjoy it.” And so I’ll keep going forward, hoping to remember to tie up my shoelaces often enough to write consistently and fulfill my goals for inkmusings, and put a thought or spark in the reader’s mind now and then. But most of all, as long as it’s fun to do so…

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The explosion of Weblogging offers an intriguing opportunity to observe human behavior, both good and bad, in both bloggers and bloggies (avid readers of specific blogs; think online groupies). Much like the masked rider of American TV fame, blog writers spin their tales and abuse language under the guise of an online identity. Do we know who these people really are? Except for the rare occasion of an in-the-flesh friend who happens to blog, you’re dependent on what a blogger chooses to present as a virtual extension of themselves.

We all grew up play-acting, becoming characters we weren’t nor were ever likely to become. Cowboys, Indians, pirates, it didn’t matter who or what, only the chance to experience different personas and unleash our imaginations mattered. And we were told this exercise was healthy for our mental development. Then as we aged, it suddenly became taboo to explore those fantasies, that it was “high time” we grew up and forgot the games of youth. Like all compliant adults, we were expected to deal with our unhappiness while grabbing reality by the short hairs and hanging on. So much for creativity and expression. Artistic types, whether in tangible or thespian arts, were fortunate and able to continue working outside their own realities under the blessings of society towards such gifted ones. But normal folk who simply enjoy donning a mask to explore a different persona are subject to cruel abuses by the rest of society; viewed as “having a problem,” or simply struggle their whole lives to fit in.

Zoom ahead to the early part of the 21st century to the Weblogging explosion. Suddenly there’s a new, accepted outlet for being “other than yourself,” a way to publicly adopt as strange a persona as your imagination can scrape from that your mind’s dark corner that you’re conditioned to pretend doesn’t exist. For many bloggers, the opportunity to online journal was simply an extension of their already active, yet private, paper journals. But some preferred to open the barred door, enter the forbidden room, and in a defiant act of burning the bridge, flip on the light switch illuminating everything without judgment.

A recent article from The Observer has some interesting examples of these masked writers. Especially interesting was the woman who, as a fiction exercise, adopted the persona of a 13-year-old boy living with his uncle. She crafted a world of an individual so convincing that her growing following absorbed everything she wrote as gospel. When at one juncture she/he mentioned being spanked by the uncle, concerned bloggies wanted to intervene and thus began the unraveling of her secret and the unmasking of another false blogger. There are many stories like this, some with tragic conclusions to the fantasy played out past a dangerous conclusion.

In reading these very words I share, can you really come to know me, or moreover, is this the real me I’m projecting? Sure, there’s a link to my home blog where there’s the obligatory About Me page and certainly there’s my voice and revealing facts threaded throughout, but can those be combined to see a complete picture of the real me, or do they merely reveal the person I want you to see? And how do you know they’re not the bored imagination of someone else? Are you so sure I’m not really a woman, some bored housewife craving to live another’s life? Or could I be someone under a witness protection plan hiding from a once-conviction of a horrific crime against society? Certainly, given the gist of what’s written, I’m hardly controversial or show any signs of luring young men or women into bad situations, or even dare I say in these unsure times, threatening the American Dream. Perhaps I’m not the best example of this theory, but still, you must wonder whether it’s all just a grand show, an experiment in fiction with no purpose other than to “pull the wool over your eyes.” And then there’s the ultimate question: If we were to meet and I take off my blog mask, would the same perceived person be standing in front of you? Or would there simply be another mask underneath?

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Borrowing from the title of that 1969 movie, “If this is Tuesday this must be Belgium” I feel the equivalent this morning: “If this is Monday it must be blogging time.” Even though I’ve settled into a five-day blogging routine, each Monday morning I have to summon my internal Marine drill sergeant to get my mental troops marching. I just don’t jump up, raring to go at the start of the week, even though it’s gorgeous weather here, cool but a refreshing break from the early heat we’ve had for the last week. I take personal responsibility for bringing on this minor cold snap, since I performed the semi-annual changing-of-the-vents this weekend. Each year after I switch the vents for the home climate system we get a cold or hot spell, guaranteed. Doesn’t sound significant, except that if the upstairs vents are open and we have to run heat, wallpaper peels off the walls from the simulated Arabian desert created by our over-sized heat exchanger. Toasty, but not inhabitable.

Last week was Philip Roth’s birthday, and while listening to Writer’s Almanac I heard that opening quote. Always one to enjoy a clever twist of words, I thought this quote hit home in a number of ways. All writers have various projects sitting there waiting for activity or conclusion, and after a while they become silent road markers to perdition if left unfinished, constantly reminding us of our failure to continue or conclude their wondrous ideas or concepts to fruition. Maintaining a blog is a well-attended, never-ending work in progress.

Blogging is enjoyable, although I could debate against that on any typical Monday morning after too-little sleep and too-much relaxation over the weekend (not sure how you can have too-much relaxation except by comparison). The obvious secret to managing works in progress (wips) is to enjoy what you’re doing. The not-so-obvious secret is to stay on top of wips so they don’t die or grow stale from neglect.

If you think I’m leading up to some sage advice on managing wips, let me end the suspense now. I practice the time-tested squeaky-wheel theory of wip management: ideas most promising (i.e., won’t get out of my head until I flush them, either literally or figuratively) are embraced and worked. The others lie dormant, in hopes of improving with age. Unlike fine wine and wisdom, such improvement rarely happens, at least on my wip list. I’d love to have software capable of age-based deletion and I could set this feature for a 5-year fallow. If I haven’t flushed the idea during that time, then it deserves a nice burial and a ceremonious burning of the old, longer wip list leading to a newer, shorter one. Maybe then I’ll run out of paving material and make that road to hell a little harder to travel.

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