The Cost of Blogging

There are always trade-offs. I spend a good bit of energy as a teacher and consultant getting my clients to let go of something. To focus on the crucial few at the expense of the often times seductive yet confusing many. It’s the same thing in our personal lives.

I’d prefer to think that I’m more pragmatic than jaundiced. But this I know…you can’t have it all. At least the way consumer marketers, life coaches and self-help book publishers might have you believe. Energy and time and all resource units for that matter—are finite. And as long as there are resource limits, there will be trade-offs whether you make the consciously or whether things just slip or become less optimal as a result of you not “tending” to them.

So what has blogging cost me? What’s become subordinated? This venue wasn’t the first place where during personal time...I dropped off my thoughts. I kept journals. I still keep work journals but they don’t contain one whit of self reflection, loathing, fantasies or memorialization of defining moments. It’s all logistics, to-do lists and meeting notes.

All of these journals are full. There’s a travel journal and there’s a journal of letters written to LFG, beginning when she was eighteen months old. Otherwise it’s just a pile of my overwrought randomosity. I had other full, handwritten books of my thoughts but I destroyed a few volumes many years ago. It scared me when I went back and read the unvarnished truth. My first thought—I wasn't married then—was “what if I die and my mama reads this?” Rupert Hart Davis’ first reaction to reading his uncle Duff Cooper’s diaries was to destroy them.

But then I learned a few things from a friend now deceased. First, you write the truth and you don’t hedge. That’s one of the beauties of chronicling; of writing in a journal (sorry, for some reason, I can’t use journal as a verb). Second, you write when you want to write, not with some disciplined “I’ve gotta write in my journal every day” sort of pressure. When your journal entries are driven by pressure to contribute versus an innate need to “get something out”, the pleasure quickly vanishes.

I enjoyed rediscovering this journal entry…“LFG on the phone—“even though I won’t be with you on Saturday, the book festival is on the Mall with authors of children’s books and grown up books and you might want to go”—lovely” LFG was six years old when she offered me that Saturday option. She knew her daddy well—even back then. I’m thinking that words…written, read and spoken…will always be strong currency for us to spend on each other. 

So I’ve started to miss my journal lately. Maybe I’ll consider writing a journal paragraph or two here and there and just do one or two blog stories a week. Stay tuned. Or not.

ADG, II … Observer