2 dec - a Touchy subject

So, today's writing challenge from www.reverb10.com:

December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

OK, mister, you just hit a nerve with me. (which after some reflection purports to be a good thing, but I'll try to save my initial huffed and bothered frame of mind for good effect...)

Firstly, my blog writing is not the writing that makes up "what I do" - rather, it's my creative (um, well...) vent where I write off the top of my head to my heart's content and blow off steam from my real writing job, in which I'm expected to produce meticulously constructed scientific articles and educational material. So thanks a bunch for making me feel bad about the one thing I had that wasn't demanding and making me block up. Way to go...
So what I'll be discussing herein is what I do each day that doesn't contribute to the writing I'm supposed to do.

OK, I'll maybe hit a nerve right back out into the world: (although it may end up biting me in the rear end:) every day, I spend way too much time Reading other peoples' blogs. Truth will out. This is the biggest, baddest and most recurring time eater that keeps me away from my real workaday writing (simply squashing the proportion of time I spend on Facebook into a mere smudge).

But the reason why I get lured away from the impersonal, passionless, snuff-dry science literature and instead keep happily drifting off in the reams and reams of personal creative writing of others, that have absolutely nothing to do with my work, is that it's usually about their passions. I don't necessarily mean passions such as 'their art', 'their music' or 'their everything' or what have you - even the personal, reflective stuff gets me and holds me in a vice-like grip that sometimes coos, "aaaw, it's funny", or roars "pay attention to this, this is life, this is pain, this is important!".
(Like I said sometime before - my job is fairly lonely and I'm a very extroverted person who longs for input from other people, something I seriously miss in my work. So when I see writing with some passion to it, I'm all, "I want what they're having...")

So, through eagerly tearing through post after post in my overloaded blog roll, I learn something new every day about what it means to be human in different contexts, with different starting points, in different parts of the world. Throughout the course of one day I die a little following a passionate life artist's fight against heartbreak in Denver, experience an Australian art-school graduate's photography career in ice-cool Stockholm, mumble through the musings of a swedish comedic writer focused entirely on 70s children's books, sigh at young love in Paris, giggle and marvel at the exuberantly bizarre take on the world that can come from someone struggling with anxiety, cackle with glee at the irresistible petulance of a certain seamstress who just moved to Europe, and muttering "Hell yeah" under my breath to someone starting a fledgling crafts business in Winnipeg and another brave one backpacking through India and volunteering at schools. Just to name a few among many.

So the second half of the question: ...and can I eliminate it?

You know what Mister, I don't think I'd want to. I wouldn't want to be without the richness of stories that all these lovely bloggers fill my sillybored mind with. Whenever they write I know that there are other people living life out there in the world and musing on it (in a more profound way than on Facebook) - bizarrely enough, these are the people I see in my office every day, albeit in the form of posts and the odd photo. It's like that old Reader's Digest heading, "Letters from all over"!

And here's where I get bitten in the rear - at the expense of my own, "serious" writing, I dare say that taking away all these stories I have the privilege to follow every day would create a huge hole in my heart, and I'm not even sure if it would finally make me set off and get to work on writing my pride and joy: "A comparison study between Canadian Industrial Engineers and Ergonomists - Part I: Stakeholders that matter" (yaaaaaaawn)

You may call in the addiction squad on me now. Mister.



PS: Thank you all you wonderful storytellers out there. :) I read ya, and you certainly contribute to this writing, at least.

PS2: I don't have a TV. So maybe all my blog reading is akin to following a bunch of TV series... Does anyone else feel that way, too?