The Blog of Eternal Stench

From overload to withdrawal… that’s how it feels having completed the November Nablahblah blogging challenge and then taken a few days to cogitate on why and what and whether I’d do it again… And I have to confess, I find myself back in the same sort of mess I was in before I started.

During November, I took a tangled ball of yarn — different colours, different textures, different ply —  and managed to extricate enough usable lengths to knit thirty squares of varying sizes. Disparate patterns. Some more pleasing than others but all of them creatively challenging and, to some degree, satisfying.

Word by sentence, I knitted my way around the maze of beginning a blog, through the labyrinth of self-doubt. I turned at the prickly hedges of uncertainty and increased beyond the black holes of despair. And at the end of the month, I cast-off with a sigh. Challenge met. Indeed, more than that, I felt some degree of joy and pride that I had developed new skills, practised some old ones, and met some talented and like-minded writers …and readers…along the way.

But in the four days since I stopped, I’ve fallen back into the Bog of Eternal Stench. And I'm pretty sure I dropped all the squares in too.

 

It wasn't actually my idea to write every day for thirty days. That's something else I fell into. At the Gunnas Writing Masterclass I attended back in September, Catherine Deveny talked about Blogher.com and how November was to be the month of writing. She told me about the challenge in that writing workshop I hated... the one I cried for a week after... the one where I was sure I felt my arse hit rock bottom. 

And then on October 31st, Gael over at The Vinyl Edition sent me a message to say she was going to give Nablopomo November a go. So I said I'd join her. Just like that. Why not?  Nothing to lose. Stop being a gunna. Maybe it really would help the happy hormones surge. Maybe I could find an opening for the light to shine in on the demons of the dark space inside my head. And for the most part, it did.

And yes, I met some 'incredibly helpful' worms along the way.





But this week, I fell back into the stinking quagmire of uncertainty. My bog of qualms. 

After my month of blogging, I still have fewer followers than you can count on one hand. I spent November reading and commenting on all sorts of blogs. Learning about what others do. Hearing what others say. But numerically, I failed. 

During the month, I found myself checking daily to see if anyone had visited my post, left a comment, noticed me. Pathetic. Embarrassing. Needy. Fail.

History repeated, regurgitating images and feelings from that time nearly fifteen years ago when we lived in a towering apartment block in Kuala Lumpur and I would click on the dial-up link every time I walked past the laptop...every time... hoping for an email from home. A connection to outside. Proof that I exist.



So in the past few days, I have examined my ugly need for validation. I have confronted the shallowness of my not having grown out of the need for approval. I have stared at the bubbling mud and breathed in the rancid fumes of self-loathing at my blog of eternal stench...

And I have decided that I will just keep on going until I reach the castle.