Oh The Irony of Writing about...How Hard it is to Write

Boy do I expect a lot from the God of Inspiration.

Apparently, he doesn't linger in the skies Zeus-like clutching thunderbolts of genius ready to fling at my head and thus onto blog.

Nor is this Kind and Noble Sir found, as many have claimed, at the bottom of a whisky bottle.

But I, who am rarely if ever at a lack for words, spoken or written, find myself often confronting blank blog space with, er, nothing but blank space where my brain should be,or at least when I left it last I used it.

I've gotten into the habit of posting at night, as I'm emphatically not a morning person, the lure of blankets, bed & sleep being far more compelling. Consequently I think about writing posts during the course of my day - some times it's an active sort of thinking where I select and discard topics - at other times I'm inspired [finally, Gods! Thanks!] by an especially worthwhile or elegant post on another blog.

Mostly though there is an undercurrent of thought that's shadowy, half-formed by an article I read during the day, or a mundane situation that registers as a hearty ping on my pet peeve monitor. For all the subjects I deem now to be too personal to blog about - oy, check back with me in a year when I've exhausted all of the suitable ones and we'll talk.

Alas, lately the standoff between the blank screen and I feel like nothing more substantial than the static snow of a television station off the air in the wee hours of the night [now there's a question for trivialists - does a station exist now that actually goes off the air and broadcasts only snow, or is that something that only those of us of a certain age will ever remember?].

Why do I blog? Why does anyone? I have few illusions that I'm reaching untold silently lurking thirsty thousands drinking in my wisdom [ah, pardon my gag reflex just now], or that the words I write on this date, at this time, during this life, will be exhumed in some obscure future by a hapless cyber-scholar and cherished for their oddities of early 21st century life, if nothing else.

During my short blogging tenure the discipline of writing something, anything - which I have striven to do on as close to a daily basis as I can manage - has changed subtly [and in some ways consierably ] the form my writing has taken, the way I choose to edit, punctuate, and select my words. My hopes, vain or otherwise, is that this nifty trajectory of progress continues with an upward trend and I end up wiser at the end. Perhaps all my words can do is nourish me - food for thought, indeed.

Although if you run into the Gods of Inspiration, it's always wise to do as I do - buy them a nice scotch on the rocks, sit back, and wait for the thunderbolts to fly.