Ready for my confession?

By Antonio de La Mano

If I am going to be totally honest, I think I’ve hoped that somehow I’d write a magical post that would change my life. Now that I’ve shoved those delusions under the carpet, it’s time to take a nice hard look at myself and my blog and here’s what I’ve figured out:

I don’t write because I want it to be perfect. I want it to be funny or superbly researched. I want it to be original –granted the potty training and travel countdown lists aren’t exactly new but at least one of them was popular!

I start things and then find myself unable to finish them. Take musical Mondays in December, according to my blog we had one Monday last month. I have a 100 pending drafts that I don’t finish because I am afraid they aren’t good enough and I am going to lose readers. The over-analyzing has just about drained every last mL of my willpower. If I debate myself over the use of American or CommonWealth spelling one more time, I might actually cut my fingers off. I am beyond exhausted.

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. Can you tell? Yes, unbelievably overwhelmed despite being pretty good at trying to live by a slow philosophy. The problem is that it’s tricky to maintain, especially when everyone around you seems to be a constant hive of activity. Oi! Stop buzzing and making me look bad!

I think I’ve got things sussed and suddenly I’m over-committed to mental ideas and projects and promises, most of which aren’t income earning, and I can’t breathe and want to curl up in a foetal position and sleep until the dawn of a new age – one where there is no more technology, which of course I’ll enjoy for about 24 hours before longing for the gentle glow of my touch screen. But I can’t curl up, because my student loans need to be deferred, again.

The current thorn in my side are two projects that have been sitting around for so long. How long you ask? Years people, like 2007. Oh god, I’ve just realised that in three years, it will have been a decade. I can no longer wake, eat, or sleep without guilt permeating from every pore of my body. (And I am totally lying there are loads of musty, damp projects that busy mental spiders have spun endless threads of webs around without actually catching any flies but let’s conveniently ignore that for now.)

My plan had been to spend the next three months taking a break from blogging on my personal site to allow me to finish at least one if not both projects. But now I have something else in mind. Something better, or so I hope.

I have ideas all the time and I let them flutter away. I sat on what I thought was a brilliant idea forever. Fifteen months later, the BBC published a similar piece on their website. <Clears throat> Not like the BBC has ever shown any interest in me but it would have been nice to have one pre-dating theirs!

So for the next three months I am just going to dump content on my site. It will be my chance to slice my painful mental abscess and just let it all ooze out, no questions asked. This will probably kill off any chance I’ve ever had of monetizing this thing but so be it.

I am excited. Are you? Maybe you shouldn’t answer that. Ok, time to see what’s been putrefying in the old noodle! Here we go…

P.S. Typos are where I draw the line. It’s the equivalent of leaving the house in yesterday’s underwear, unless of course you are only just getting home. If you see them, please let me know!

P.P.S. Would you have liked this as a vlog?