The Battles Within

One of life's myriad of frustrations is knowing you have to do something you don't really feel like doing. I have to write a blog for tomorrow. I don't want to write a blog for tomorrow--there are too many other things to be done. I've grabbed myself by the back of the neck and forced myself to stop another really-has-to-be-done project at least three times in the past hour.

"Do the damned blog!"

"I don't want to do the blog right now! I'm busy! I'll do it later!"

Of course the project I keep dragging myself away from is the preparing of another--number six--of the first ten books in the Dick Hardesty series for reissue, and when I'm in the middle of something, I deeply resent having to interrupt it to do something...anything...else. Trying to convince myself that it's probably going to be, at the rate things seem to go with me, ten or fifteen years before all the books can be reissued (when I'm in a bad mood, I tend to overdramatize), and there is, therefore, no rush to finish the go-over falls on totally deaf internal ears. I want to work on the go-over. I do not want to write a blog.

And I'm of course not fooling myself when I say I'll get to the blog a little later. I know that now I'm working on the go-over, I won't want to stop until it's done, and know that I am condemned to a long series of "Do the blog NOW!"/"I'll get to it later" (when I know full well I won't) back and forths which will neither get the blog written, nor allow me to concentrate fully on the go-over.

"You've got an obligation to those people who are good enough to come looking for a new blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to give them one."

"I'll just rewrite an older blog. No one will notice."

"I don't know who that insults more...your readers or your ego. Besides, that's a last resort, and you know it. And, you'd still have to interrupt the go-over in order to rewrite one."

"You're going to pawn this off as a blog, aren't you?"

"Well...."

"One of the prerequisites of a blog is that it says something significant; that it says something that the reader can relate to. What the hell is the significance of this drivel? What are they supposed to relate to?"

"Maybe to the fact that by keeping so much locked up within ourselves and never admitting to our inner conflicts...what we see as our weaknesses...we only make things worse. I look at you, and at everyone else, and see a well-adjusted human being who is always calm, controlled, and in control of themselves, when in fact, chances are very high that you are internally going through exactly the same things as I am. But because we never admit to our inner battles, each of us assumes we're the only one who has them. And you quite probably assume that, because no one else shows, or talks about, or in any way acknowledges their own our inner struggles, they don't have any.

To acknowledge that to be human is to have internal, personal problems which don't really involve anyone else--and that internal confusion and frustration are just a natural part of life for everybody-- would go a long way toward alleviating our sense of alienation and underscoring the fact that we all have far more in common than we realize.

I've apparently made it my mission, in these often rambling and perhaps seemingly pointless blogs, to reassure you that if, perchance, you can identify with some of the things I say which others, for whatever reason, don't, maybe my saying them has some small value to you. It would be nice if they did.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's  Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.