For 4 days in a row, I’ve been up before my alarm. This morning it was before 4:30 am. In addition to a bit more writing time, I might also get a bit of email time in… along with my meditation and workout before heading to my school. But also for the 4th day in a row, I started writing a blog post, and more than 1/2 way through decided to erase it and start again. This isn’t a journal that I tuck under my bed, for my eyes only… it’s public. That changes the dynamic of what I want to say.
Monday when I wrote, We are all in the same lifeboat, the original, deleted post was on a similar topic but it was very negative and scathing towards people I call in the post above ‘vaccine hesitant’. It was a full on rant against people who selectively choose the science they want to pay attention to on the fringes. With 7.8 billion people on earth, and social media designed to share attention seeking information, you can find an expert somewhere that disagrees with convention and spreads misinformation. You can find a quotation out of context. You can find data to manipulate in a way that makes it look worse than it is, or use data n a way not intended by the research.
I was listening to a podcast recently that spoke of how much we love the Galileo story. We want to find that story, about the person who sees the world differently than convention… and is right. But while science is dependent on this for progress, these stories are far more infrequent than conventional science being right.
Two days ago I wrote, Thinking Time and Space, and I wasn’t fully honest when I said, “I’m not ready to share the drawing yet, ideas are still being put together. But I can share a couple parts I’ve already written about”. I would have shared the image in progress, or more of it, if it had time to discuss the image, but I wasted too much time writing about an issue that I realized I shouldn’t share. It was some thoughtful writing that took time, but I had no way of masking who I was talking about as I navigated a challenging situation at work… again, some writing that should only be written in a private journal.
Yesterday’s The gift of giving almost didn’t get published, because after writing it I thought, ‘after making the point that giving has a selfish aspect, am I not also emphasizing this in a really negative way by somewhat bragging about giving?‘ But I’d already erased a post I didn’t want to share, and needed to schedule my post and get on with my day.
Today I started to write about a really sensitive topic, and realized that I wasn’t doing it justice. I was trivializing a challenging issue in a way that was disrespectful, to make a point that was completely undermined by my aloofness towards the topic. So I erased it and here I am giving a summary of how hard it is to write publicly sometimes.
I find myself struggling to write openly, while also being respectful to others; Trying to not disclose information about the lives of other people that should stay private; Trying not to rant when something is bothering me; Trying to be personal, but not over sharing.
Some mornings the writing flows, sometimes I stare at the blinking curser and my mind is more blank than when I try to meditate. But the hardest part of writing a daily, public journal is going through phases like this where I actually invest time in writing something, then delete it. For 4 days now, I’ve woken up early only to write and erase something and start over again. I’m not trying to be thoughtful, poignant, meaningful, and/or interesting every single day. I’m trying to be honest. But writing out loud every day can be challenging to do because not everything that comes to mind, and gets written, should be published.
