A Novel Idea

The other day, after almost a week of inactivity online,  I issued this status report on Facebook:  Tunie Munson-Benson is preoccupied with trying on her space suit for an imminent launch into the blogosphere… it’s always something.

Among the good wishes that followed, a friend and film buff quoted the director in “42nd Street”:  “You’re going out there a juvenile, but you’re gonna come back a star!”  What could I do but admit that my space suit does have sequins, front and back, and that the flight training included tap dancing lessons.

Fact is, I’m having a bit of stage fright.  Or pre-launch jitters.   Just before the countdown, here I sit, with the impulse to open the hatch and crawl out before takeoff.  I’ve been writing posts on the sly, to get the hang of paring down my journal entries to standard size for a blog — which is to say, using only a third or a fifth or sometimes a tenth of what I put on the pages of my journal.  Because that is how it is.  I have always kept a private journal to find out what I think.  And sometimes it takes a heap of words to get me there.

But why blog?  It would probably not cross a plumber’s mind to reflect in public about an especially challenging toilet repair or what it feels like to deal with other people’s crap all day.  Literally.  (Not so, my daughter insists.  Other plumbers might read it for solutions or encouragement; some people for a laugh.)  Nevertheless, few, if any, would begin blogging with more than a few friends in mind.  There was that guy, Joe the Plumber, who aspired to celebrity-status, but we know what that got him.

So, let me be perfectly clear.  I am quite happy to tap-dance out in space, all by myself.  I do so all the time in my living room.  In fact, there’s comfort in imagining myself posting in the blogosphere for my own purposes, since the prospect of having to publicly write about, say, rejection of my manuscript leaves me feeling, well, naked.  Whatever you do, avoid, at all costs, imagining this blogger naked!   Forget about head-to-toe  sequins, too.  I’m more likely to be posting in my pajamas, or what tries to pass for pajamas, busily mixing metaphors (space craft, road trips!), and asking, for some weeks to come:  to blog or not to blog?  I’ll get back to you, friend-reader, when an answer comes.

This entry was posted on September 6, 2009 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.