Just nod if you can hear me

In the words of Pink Floyd: Is there anybody out there?

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks. I'm going to share some of it now, but please indulge me in a little navel-gazing and Feeling Sorry For Myself before you click off; I promise it's not all doom and gloom!

Blogging's a strange beast. It's a little bit like writing a diary that's not private. At the same time, it's not at all like that because it's seldom about daily events. It's almost simply plopping thoughts out as they occur to you. But of course that's not true either.

So, dear reader, what's the Whole Truth? Well, it's been just over a week since I last posted a blog and I've been trying to decide what to write next since then. It's not that I don't have anything to say, but that I wonder if it's worth reading. The experience of starting a blog has been very unnerving (see first blog entry!) and my anxiety has been quite high thinking about it. You see, with each subsequent post, my readership has dwindled, and now stands at one quarter of the original.

The rational part of my brain says this: I can access this one statistic, but I have no qualifying information about it: the time I posted at, the wording I used in my link, people's interest levels, people's nosiness levels, etc. I simply see the unhelpful graphic showing a declining scale. It's incredibly demoralising, which is when the irrational part of my brain begins to crawl out of its dank little corner.

I already explained that FeeGee's Ramblin' Prose is my first foray into writing for public consumption, and there has been great satisfaction in writing with an audience in mind. However, putting my thoughts, opinions, feelings into the ether is very raw and vulnerable, an emotional sensation which I try to avoid, as - while it's not an unhealthy thing to experience on its own - for me, it often brings along that little creep, Low Self-Esteem.

My long-term friend visited from abroad this past weekend and we enjoyed a few days catching up, but truthfully the chat was superficial, lighthearted and fun. The real conversation happens in texts when we aren't together. I'm more comfortable interacting with people when I can't see them and when I have time to word myself correctly. I worry that I'll say something thoughtless on the spur of the moment in person. But the problem with the monster called Low Self-Esteem is that online can be just as bad. I put time and effort into creating a piece of writing that means something to me and no one reads it. My brain goes into an overdrive of negativity.

Over the past 8 days since my last post, I've thought of at least four topics or ideas for future blogs, but they remain unwritten for one of two reasons: first, that no one will read it, if the trend continues; or worse (and this is entirely due to Low Self-Esteem) that the reason no one is reading is because what I'm writing is a big pile of doodoo and I should just stop.

It is at this point that I have to reassure any remaining readers of the following: I do have a rational brain in my head and I frequently tell myself that the above thoughts are utter nonsense, the product of a mental health condition which is treatable with reinforcement of positive messages. This is not linked to my clinical depression and it also doesn't mean that I'm a feckin' looney tune. I'm just a normal person with some self doubt.

I know that there are peaks and troughs involved in any venture like this. I understand that the reasons for the decline in readership are more nuanced. I know this! Yet the little creature, lurking in its grimy corner of my brain, creeps out when I least expect it and whispers nasty remarks. I have to summon every positive message in my arsenal to make it bugger off and leave me alone. And by the time I've done that, the muse which struck me with an idea for a blog has vanished, to return at a very inopportune moment like while I'm driving the kids to school or when I'm lying in bed doing a crossword at one o'clock in the morning, telling myself to Stop It And Go To Sleep. The ideas come back in these junctures and I curse them upside down.

But the joy I take in structuring a sentence, then a paragraph and eventually an entire blog is overwhelming. I love the initial thought process. I love re-reading a section (and agreeing with it, teehee!) and making small adjustments. I love thinking of a new word to use and suddenly changing the subtleties of an idea. Part of it is the fact that I just love language. Creating something which can make people laugh or cry using a single set of 26 letters is fascinating and has provided me with endless hours of entertainment in my own reading. To be able to be a creator, to write something and have someone say that it made them feel something, is just marvellous.

But the process has been exhausting, too. It turns out you're not just dumping your thoughts on the Internet after all. Our thoughts don't usually float inside our brains in fully-formed paragraphs. To be legible to others, they must be moulded and structured. To do them justice, that takes time and effort. More time and effort than I'd appreciated, going in. It's all been quite revelatory.

So in the end I think I'm better off for blogging. Weighing it all up, I get more positives out of it than I do negatives. I guess I'll just need to accept that the readership will be what it will be and if anyone else gets benefit from my ramblins then it's a happy by-product.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying another Pink Floyd lyric:

Tongue tied and twisted, just an earth bound misfit, I

Until next time.

FG x