Blogging as a Warm Up

Sometimes, when faced with the task of writing (and yes, it often feels like a task), I first delay, but then often settle upon writing a blog. It's low stakes--sort of. I don't seem to edit as much as I'm writing, leaving that task for a second or third read. Instead, I am somehow able to let my brain, the word-tick machine, simply dictate to the page. I begin with a particular thought, but that thought usually gets interrupted with ideas, with that click that happens when I settle into writing, when I stop fighting what I can't avoid, when I allow myself the time to do that which makes me smile deep inside. I never, well hardly ever, second guess the words that I put upon a page when blogging.

That doesn't mean I don't revise, question some language, attempt to craft to the best of my ability at the time. But I don't linger for hours, days, weeks, months, years with a piece on my blog. It is fluid. And it's something I can begin and end, usually in one sitting. Rarely, do I begin a blog and not finish it, abandoning it because I couldn't find enough to say, because I lost interest, because I was afraid of rejection.

It is instantly publishable, guaranteed an audience, even if that audience are only a few, even if that audience I can predict. Low stakes--sort of.