lousy blogger … am not! YOU are! AM NOT – YOU are!

Why did you ever get into this blahging thing anyway? You don’t know what you’re doing.

Oh, yes I do. I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’m blogging to bug you. Or is it, I’m bugging to blog you? whatever. It’s bothering you, so I consider it a success.

You are a BRAT – always contradicting me, always trying to be a blahgin’ bother to me.

Yah, well, it’s working, isn’t it? You’re all het up over nothing, so I’m accomplishing my goal.

Hmph! A lot YOU know. I’m not het up, I’m having a glowing moment.

Glowing moment my aunt nellie! You’re having a hot flash, admit it. And admit that you WISH you could blog. You can’t even spell it, much less actually do it.

Oh, you don’t think so, eh? I can too spell it – I. T. – so there, brat!

Grow up, will ya – you’re old enough to have those hot flashes (oh, pardon me…glowing moments), then you’re old enough to use a little tact and diplomacy.

TACT?! DIPLOMACY!? YOU are telling ME about tact and diplomacy?? Do you even know what those words mean?

Give it up, grandma. YOU don’t even know what they mean. And I’m far too tactful to tell you, even in a diplomatic manner.

Yeah, you’re tacky all right. And your diploma was probably automatic too – ordered from a catalog for five bucks and a book of green stamps.

Sigh … and to think I let you run my thought processes all these years. Well, it’s no wonder my brain is a fuzzball most of the time, and on the half-track in the train yard. But no more!

Don’t get smart with me, sister. I can read you like a book. You’ll never get rid of me. You need me.

Do you really think you have job security? I don’t need an alter-ego. I can drop you any time I want – and I’m sorely tempted when you keep making these wisecracks about me.

Oh yeah? Well, go ahead. See how far you get with this blah blah blahging thing without me. See how far you go in life without me whispering in your ear. You cannot think on your own. You OWE me.

OK, that’s it. I’m outta here. No. Wait. YOU’RE outta here. Buh-bye.

NOOOOOO……pleeeeezzzz……nooooo……let me stay…….don’t send me away……I’m sorry I was a mean alter-ego……I’llll beeeee gooooooodddd……………………..R E A L L Y ! ! ! 

And THAT, my friends, is what happens to me quite often when I sit down with the laptop open and the draft page before me, waiting for words of wisdom to flow from this brain, down through these fingers, and out onto the page. It gets lost somewhere in the netherland of nothingness and nonsense, and I fight with my alter-ego to wrestle some sort of coherent post from the verbal jungle. Yeah, and don’t try to tell me YOU don’t go through this same type of one-on-one argument from time to time.

As an aspiring blogger, and a fairly new one at that, I often find it very difficult to keep my thoughts focused in one direction. They fly off into various nooks and crannies, hiding from me, staying just one step ahead of my grasp. And sometimes, just when I almost catch a stray thought and bring it back into submission, a whole new idea pops up and distracts me, which naturally frees the hard-won earlier thought to run away again. And so the process goes, until I give up and go play with the sewing machine or a crossword puzzle.

Learning to focus and develop an idea is hard for me, but very much worth the effort I will have to exert if I want this to be a successful venture. So … where do I go for help after I oust my self-defeating alter ego? To other bloggers! I go and read their thoughts and ideas, and study their writing styles. And I read the comments – I have actually found really great blogs to follow that way.

This will take some time to develop fully, so please. Bear with me for a day or ten. I’ll be back with more on this subject of blog-reading and blog-following. But tonight, I need some sleep. You do too. Good night. 

And she goes off into the bedroom, quietly slipping on her pajamas and settling down for a long (well, at this late hour, SHORT) night’s rest, to reappear tomorrow – refreshed and ready to hit the blogging trail. Or not.