Happy 1st Birthday, I See Two!

One year ago today I posted my first entry here. My expectation was that I would post 3-4 witty, pithy posts each week, develop a large readership, become a well-known Mommy Blogger, and receive invitations to guest post at other famous blogs and possibly get a regular writing gig at an online magazine.

As usual, my great expectations didn’t take into account little details like “doing the work” and “promoting my blog.” I guess I just thought Oprah would somehow stumble across my blog one day and the rest would take care of itself. After a couple of months of writing, though, I realized a few things:

One, it is hard to come up with something truly interesting to say several times a week, and I don’t have the motivation to make myself work that hard. I accepted that one post a week was all I really cared to write, and even then I would settle for “semi-interesting to my family,” or “mildly amusing to people who know me.” Two, I’m not that interested in reading other people’s blogs, getting to know other mommy bloggers, looking for opportunities to guest blog, or mastering the technology to drive more traffic to my blog. After researching other blogs and blogging in general for a few weeks, I realized there is a hell of a lot of noise out there and I didn’t want to put forth the effort to make my blog rise above the din. Three, I’m not as motivated to get my essays published as I thought I was. I have actually taken a few things I’ve written in this blog, developed them into full essays, and submitted them to print and online magazines for publication consideration, without success. A professional writer would say I haven’t put enough effort out because I’ve sent each piece to only 3 or 4 places and have done this with only 3 or 4 pieces. And that is true. But I’m not interested in using my time to mail or email my work to the (literally) hundreds of places that I could submit, and so I don’t.

I’ve come to recognize my surprising lack of motivation when it comes to writing (my supposed life-long passion) and I’ve made peace with it for the time being. I do feel like I actually have the time to do the things I’d need to do to develop a freelance writing career if I really, really wanted to, but I guess I don’t really want to. I find myself some nights, eating my second bowl of ice cream and watching old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I think, “hmm, I could be writing right now if I really felt like it, couldn’t I?”

I plan to continue I See Two for the foreseeable future, plugging away at my weekly post, and continuing to use the rest of my spare time to read (usually at least one book per week, alternating between parenting books and fiction novels), keep house, exercise, and eat ice cream. Maybe someday in the future I’ll be able to point to five years of weekly posts to convince an editor that I could, in fact, be trusted with a weekly column. But for now, I’ll just keep waiting for Oprah to find me.