Next: Hanlon’s Razor. Previously: Isaias and Old Books.

Routines Or Nah

449 words.

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza prompt kicked off with Everwake, who wrote:

The wheel of Promptapalooza has turned it's terrible gaze to me. The eyes of Belghast's Blaugustosphere empire rest upon my humble blog. Will I seize the provided prompt? Will I provide a response that leaves the masses weeping with joy in the streets? Or will I scribe a dithering dump, to the eternal ridicule of my blog peers?

- Everwake

Apologies for quoting so much, but it’s fantastic. Go read the post please. I added a second link to it so you don’t even have to scroll up to find it.

I loved that opening paragraph so much because it perfectly encapsulates my own fears as I wait for the 28th, staring at this super secret writing prompt without the vaguest clue of what to say about it. But still, I’m a writer, damn it! The well of inspiration is limitless! But I might need to engage the writing skills I developed in high school English class to write papers without any knowledge of the subject matter.

Anyway, Everwake’s prompt was: Everyone has specific rituals that they follow, tell us about one of yours.

Near the beginning of August, I pasted all of the prompts into an Evernote document and quickly wrote down my first responses to each prompt. I left about half of them blank. Most of the rest inspired a word or sentence. A precious few got almost a paragraph (one of which was the next prompt).

For this prompt, my first reaction was, “Or nah. Too revealing.”

My rituals-which I, too, took to mean “routines”-would probably reveal too much about myself, things that I wouldn’t necessarily hold up as my best traits to the world. Partly because my routines are weird, and undoubtedly most normal human beings would find them so, and partly because they’re largely non-existent at the moment, and it’s a bit of a problem.

One routine I’m currently trying is sitting down in front of a blank WordPress editor and writing a post every morning. I thought it was going okay until this one, which, so far, I would classify in the realm of “wow that’s embarrassing, I can’t believe I actually published that.”

There is definitely value in writing every day, but is there value in posting what you write every day? (If you aren’t getting paid for it, that is.) Is there value in blogging at all in 2020? These are questions I wrestle with quite often.

P. S. No, the picture of my dog has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I figured I might as well embrace the full impact of the train wreck that this post has become.

Related

Next: Hanlon’s Razor. Previously: Isaias and Old Books.

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Archived Comments

everwake 2020-08-05T19:49:22Z

It’s amazing how much anxiety yesterday’s post gave me. I don’t know why. At the end of the day the viewer numbers were about the same as always, and I’m obviously not getting paid for anything here.

I’m guessing we’re all under such unusual strain nowadays that even a little extra bit feels like a lot.

Thanks for your kind words about my post! I’m looking forward to your day in the sun as well.

bhagpuss 2020-08-05T20:55:46Z “Value” is so overrated. Existence is sufficient. More than.

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