Focus, You

I don't know what I want this blog to be. Normally, I would have felt the need to figure out a theme before I started a project like this, but the whole process seemed a little chicken-and-egg to me, and I ended up feeling that the best way to figure out what to blog about is to blog.

(Of course, I could have started a trial blog in Word or something, but how depressing would that have been? I would have been like Creed. Although maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.)

Of course number two, there's also the possibility that one theme isn't something I'd be very good at delivering, anyway. I know we all have varied lives filled with varying interests, but each of the members of my immediate family tends to cycle--usually dramatically--through a few major...projects? obsessions?...each year. For me, these projects/obsessions are as follows:

1) Professional Development. I'm lucky to work in a job that gives me a lot of freedom in this area. There's research to be read, plans to be drafted, and on and on. I also maintain an active freelancing life, so I get variety there as well. Still, there are times when I'll be almost fanatic about boning up on project management skills, for example, and I'll feel like I have to go buy a bunch of books about project management right now.

2) Physical Activity/Nutrition/Overcoming While Simultaneously Giving Into the Tyranny of the Scale. Shocker, I'm sure, even if you don't know me. Here's a side anecdote: I was in a boutique trying on a coat the other day, and the fit was a little, um, snug. I was trying the coat on in the front of the store, so the salesperson was watching me, and I'm always paranoid that salespeople are generally making horrible judgments about most of their customers.

"Ha ha," I muttered, "still got a few baby pounds to lose." I didn't want her to think I was in the habit of trying too-small clothes on as a matter of course (although I am).

"Oh, when are you due?" she asked. Ba-dum-dum. She was serious, but I chose to hear this as a poke at the classic faux pas where a non-pregnant person is identified as a pregnant person.

"I already had the baby."

"How sweet! How old?"

"...eleven months," I said, pretty much ruining all my cred as someone who isn't normally this pudgy. "Eleven months" just doesn't have the same ring as, say, "three weeks."

And so, as with many, the working out and the dietary diligence waxes and wanes. However, I'm always happy to know things about food, and I haven't managed to unknow a lot of the things I've learned about nutrition over the years. Case in point: My mom called yesterday to tell me that sweet potatoes were, contrary to conventional wisdom, lower in sugar than regular potatoes. (Yes, that was her purpose for calling.) "Sweet potatoes are also very rich in antioxidants," I said sagely.

3) Creative Writing. Unsurprisingly, I write in bursts, I send out submissions in bursts, and I keep tabs on the literary world in bursts. I think this style is probably fine, generally, so long as I don't let too much time pass before creative writing cycles around again.

And then there's everything else. Some interests are constant, for obvious reasons (um, hello, baby), and others are flashes in the pan and not really worth talking about here. For example, I'm certainly not going to mention that astrology phase.

My goal, I guess, would be to find a more consistent balance between all of these. I think a lot of people struggle with the all-or-nothing approach to life, enough so that maybe it's just ingrained and I should stop thinking I need to get over it. Also, having such short-term focus has its merits: My brother decided on a Tuesday to put hardwood flooring in his living room, and he'd installed it by the end of Wednesday. I can't claim to have his ability to follow through on this particular project--I barely know how to install a battery, and I'm not even talking about a car battery--but then there's also the time I bought too many light fixtures for our new home because I'd forgotten to count how many I'd need, but I was at Lowe's already and just couldn't bear the thought of putting off the light-fixture buying for another second. And now those extra light fixtures sit, still packaged, in our house, gathering dust because I'm done thinking about light fixtures and so can't be bothered to bring them back for a refund. So who's to say what's best?

I do want to give sustained attention to this blog, though. Can that be my theme, then?