To Poo and Back Again

A few days ago, I started writing a blog post about why I haven’t written any blog posts for a while, and now I can’t find it.  It’s taken a lot of resolve to stop looking for it and start again.

It began with me explaining how, every so often, I decide that I need a Real Job and I kick around the idea of getting my Realtor’s license.  And then some kind of divine intervention occurs and I end up with a writing gig or in a writing workshop or basically doing something that has everything to do words and ideas and nothing to do with houses and closing costs.  As if the universe is trying to tell me something.

I would actually make a good Realtor in some ways, because I really like showing people around and telling them nifty little things they might not know.  About a house, or a neighborhood, or a town.  It would also give me the opportunity to wear some of the cute outfits my Dresser put together for me last year when I broke down last year and paid someone to help me figure out what to wear.

But instead, I’m in ratty jeans, sitting in front of a computer screen that I’m absolutely certain is the cause of my failing eyesight.   This is because I’m six weeks into a writing class.

I come to writing classes in perhaps the most arrogant way.  I must need to conjure up a certain amount of egotistical overconfidence just to get myself to sign up.  Because, writing workshops are kind of scary.  At least they are for me.  You’re basically paying someone a chunk of money to allow you to sit in a circle and have 10 people tell you why your essays don’t work.

So, all puffed up and full of myself, I walk into a room of other writers, fairly certain that I will be the most competent of the group.  I soon discover, quickly and incontrovertibly, that I suck. 

Ok, maybe that’s too harsh. Let’s just say, it dawns on me that not only am I not the best in the room, I may possibly be the worst. 

As you might expect, this is not an ideal mindset for churning out blog posts.

This exact process has transpired so many times in precisely the same way that I feel like I should know by now to just walk in humble in the first place.  But my brain is a rat bastard sometimes and it won’t let me just decide to be humble. It requires experiential proof.

I’m not sure if it’s like this for everyone, but I find Being Humbled very liberating, but absolutely exhausting. And not for just an hour or two; I’m kind of wrung out for a long time. 

It also makes me really hungry.

So between spending the last many weeks writing, reading other people’s submissions, commenting on those submissions, overeating and generally feeling like poo, you can see how blogging might get shelved for a little while.

I think I’m back now, though.  Thanks for being patient. 

Poor Mrs. Smarty Pants

I’ve had a hard time writing lately.

Ever since Father’s Day actually, when a group of us sat around the picnic table trying to define "intellectual." Someone had been telling a story about a woman none of us knew. He described her as an intellectual. Someone else picked up on that and ran with it: What makes someone an intellectual? Isn’t it more than simply being intelligent? Or well read? Everyone around the table that day could have been described as smart – some extremely smart – but we all agreed, none of us were intellectuals.

No one could quite say why. My husband described it as the difference between being athletic and being an athlete. Another person suggested that maybe it was like pornography – difficult sometimes to define, but you know it when you see it.

Someone then asked, Hey, how many of us are pseudo intellectuals? Several hands went up, including mine. I had unwittingly interpreted that to mean “intellectual wannabe” instead of “big fat poser.”

I came home and looked up Intellectual (n.) on Dictionary.com, mainly interested in the subtleties that differentiate an intellectual from just someone who is super smart.

It said: “a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, esp. on an abstract and general level.”

And after that, I couldn’t write. In fact, I could barely even think. I felt so inadequate about my inability to be abstract and general. (Not to be confused, of course, with my highly refined talent for being cryptic and meaningless.)

I still have a lot to say. But I’m afraid no one needs to know any more about my gecko or my crickets, my coconut bra or my flailing tennis game.

I know people will email me privately, begging me to write further about the nuance to my backhand. And, you know, I’ll probably comply. But I’m just saying, it might be different around here from now on.

And then again, maybe it won’t.