It's been a while... I want to give this blog thing another go. I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

I wanted to write a huge blog post announcing my triumphant return to the blogging circuit, but I never got around to it. So here's something that's a little different, an essay:

They Had a Baby Named Idle

I’ve been told that being idle is a process of being reflective, and in many ways that’s true. There have been times when I’ve stopped what I was doing to think things over. I’d step back, for instance when I’m writing essays like this, and say to myself, “Ok, well I’ve probably meandered too much. I wanted to talk about my day at the video store and I ended up talking about my mother’s back problems.” Then, I would fix the situation (erase this, expound on that, steal a joke and paste it there) and be glad for it. Even before I set out to work on something, I make it a point to mull over the subject hours upon hours until a huge light bulb appears over my head, or at least I like to imagine.

However, I’ve begun the habit of thinking things over too much, to the point where the work that I set out to do, like this essay, becomes bogged down by my constant thought of it. I’ll have a great idea for a story, essay, blog post, etc. and work over the details in my head. But the idea snowballs into something so large that I don’t know what to do with it. It’s like a giant ball-and-chain attached to my ankle. Or maybe the better analogy is that these large thoughts can’t fit through the all-important, gold and diamond encrusted Door of Productivity (or the silver-plated Laundry Chute of Industry, for those who don’t believe in doors). I sit there for a long time and do nothing, out of fear that I would do my ideas an injustice by trying to work on them.

I have never had this problem before. I used to be able to put my mind to the task at hand, without worry. I’d go home from school, sit down on my kitchen table, and get the assignment done. I’d look over the work, see that I’ve answered all the questions or otherwise satisfied the requirements, then turn the paper in the following morning. I get my B+ afterward.

Maybe I’ve become too idle when I cared about getting A’s. Or maybe it’s because I started to worry about being perfect. To be fair, I’ve always been a perfectionist. I was really good in the spelling test circuit of elementary school, where I had 100%’s on the majority of my 20-word tests (just ask my mom). Math was an easy thing for me too, before I had to deal with those damn Greek letters in my formulas. For the most part, I was a fairly good student, and a good worker. I would only get lower grades in areas that required more than rote memorization. If there isn’t a clear set of instructions, then I’m usually at a loss. Writing this essay comes to mind. It’s a bit of a drag for me because there are numerous paths to finishing one, and it’s hardly the same when you write another. I buckle under the freedom that it gives me.

I find it ironic that I’ve chosen to pursue writing, where I make slow progress. Why shouldn’t I work toward something that’s easy for me and, perhaps, even more lucrative? You could say that I do it because I see it as a challenge to overcome or that I’m not satisfied with push-button type jobs, and I wouldn’t disagree with you. But as I near the end of this essay, I feel a sense of comfort. The thoughts that had been building up inside of me had passed through that door (or the laundry chute) and I can move on knowing I’ve produced something that means a lot to me. I want to be a writer, and I’ve just written something. So that’s good enough.