the need for speed

(It sounded better than “the need to blog”)
So, yeah. It turns out that I can’t really take a sabbatical from blogging after all. As soon as I announced my plan to do so, I started getting this immense backlog of ideas for entries just piling up in my mind, and my knees started buckling under the weight! Which is to say I love Perfect Heart, and I don’t want to let it die. The nice feedback I got from my last entry in the comments (plus email conversations with nice readers, and actual conversations with nice friends) has sort of re-grounded me. Rebecca likened my blog to a comic strip- story lines and characters fade in and out, and sometimes I hit a good stride, and sometimes I falter, but the concept is a good one. I think I had just inflated my critics to this monster size, and assumed that every single reader was just rolling their eyes whenever my name popped up on the UrHo front page. “Oh god, here comes Willow with her non-ironic, saccharin nonsense again. What a jerk.”
Talking with Mike I realize that there are ways to make my blog better without sacrificing my basic mission. Especially now that school has calmed down a bit, I can spend more time on entries and really flesh them out with details and pictures and stuff. I’m also going to tone down the stories about my students, because they sometimes become just filler entries. And there are topics that I have been avoiding lately that I need to address to really give a full picture of where I am right now. In other words, even though my boyfriend is the mayor of blogtown I am still going to write about how tough it is to manage our time together when we are both real busy and stuff. And sometimes I shy away from writing about super-fun times, because I feel guilty that PDX friends that I don’t see that much will feel left out if they read on my blog that I went to a fun party and didn’t call them. Instead of shame-spiraling, I’m just going to try to hang out with them more.
So, I guess that’s it. Sorry to raise the alarm. I got a little self-conscious there for a minute, but Perfect Heart is here to stay. I am recommitted to doing my thing, keeping it real, working it out. And no real or imaginary cubicle eye-roller is going to shame me into blogging about something more serious. Like economics. Or foreign policy. This is the Willow Show, man. Tune in!