Once more, with feeling

I tend to not finish things I start.

I was reading my horoscope the other day–don’t judge me, I don’t plan my life around it–and it said a characteristic of Libras is that they love to start things and don’t often finish them. I am an exhuberant starter, but then something inevitably happens. I lose steam, I feel stupid, I lack enthusiasm, or I run into a roadblock that seems to inhibit my path.

I did that with blogging. Oh, yeah, I blogged. For about four months at the beginning of the year, I was a really active blogger. It was fun, for a while–a place to decompress, a place to reflect, a place to make the crazily disparate puzzle pieces of my life connect.

Then, like always, I got a little…less enthusiastic. There was more to the story than that, but the short version is that I lost my fire.

The dusty copy of Anna Karenina next to my bed, amid the other books that I’ve started and stopped for lack of…enthusiasm, is another symbol of this impulse.

So why try again?

Well, the blogging answer’s pretty simple. The dissertation process is a whole new world…and I have missed the outlet that my blog offers. Writing here helps me write elsewhere. Blogging primes the pump, so to speak, and my well has felt pretty dry lately. Bad metaphors over. See what I mean? I NEED a blog. Oy.

Beyond that, though, I keep picking up Anna Karenina, keep trying to keep in touch with old friends, keep trying to resuscitate old projects because I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t manage to tie up loose ends. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than checking something off of a to-do list.

Actually, there’s nothing more satisfying to me than emphatically drawing a big black line through a task on my to-do list. Even if it’s something simple, it’s a testament to me that I do follow through.

So, I’m back. I’ll try this blogging deal once more and we’ll see how it goes.