The problem with writing a blog

Besides wanting to share my adventures, writing a blog is a good way for me to vent my frustrations and anxieties by trying to see the humor in those situations.  Also, when it goes down on paper, er screen,  the large problems begin to look trivial and easily solvable.  I enjoy the lonesome hours of sitting and wondering what to say, how to say it, and I have lots of those hours to fill.

The problem is that I always feel that the next entry must be better than the last.  I must make it more funny, more poignant, more thought provoking than anything else I have produced before.  Of course this would be great if I eventually win a Pulitzer prize for my writing and then a Nobel prize for my research.  Although I believe that anything is possible with hard work, I know that I am lazy when it comes to writing.  I just enjoy telling a story about my day and some days are just more interesting than others.

I think my story telling is inherited.  My grandfather was known to tell tales.  My aunt and my mother collected his stories in the years before he died so we would be able to pass them on to yet another generation.  As I remember, unlike me, his stories would stay the same each time I heard them, but I would catch some part that I had missed before.

My stories are always works of art, a performance, getting changed slightly to fit the audience or location.  My wife is always amazed to hear these stories and sits there wondering if we were really at the same events that I describe.  But like all movies BASED on a true story, having the elements of drama, suspense, and humor make a better story. Therefore the teller of the tale must enhance it or add it if it wasn't there.


Here is the difference:

Another average day, gray sky, raining, nothing really happened.  Got up in the morning worked on my project, went for a run, went to lunch, went to the office, talked politics and philosophy.  Went home, worked, made some dinner, worked, wrote a blog entry, worked, went to bed.

But as a story I can pick out one thing and enhance it:

Dragged my self out of bed this morning to another dull grey sky and the sound of rain hitting the window.   Plopping down in the chair in front of my computer after a grueling two step walk, I started the daily hard-labor task of beating my project into submission.  After two hours of a losing battle, I retreat to formulate a new plan of attack.  But, the rain has stopped, this is France, and it is nearly lunchtime, so I take a two hour break. Throwing on my running gear, I head out to the river. I always run up river first so when I turn around it is an easy cruise downhill.  There are a few other hardy people out and I try to smile and acknowledge them, but, if we start to make eye contact, they quickly look the other way. I know that if someone returns my smile that they are definitely foreigners, probably American.

I think I may know why the locals don't look at other people - they walk their dogs down along the path.  Here in the city, the dogs can't distinguish between the earth and cement.  Seems it is all the same to them and the owners don't see or don't care to clean up after them.  So you can see that it is important to constantly watch where you are stepping.

Seems much more interesting, well at least I hope so.