Where I’ve been
Earlier this month, as quite a few of my most recent readers know, I was diligently participating in the 2010 Blogathon. It has been an interesting experiment for me. I tend to resist writing for frequency. I think writing with intention is so much more meaningful. Part of me also strongly resists writing about writing, even though I feel as if that's something I've done frequently on this site.
Meanwhile, I've been honing my own focus on environmental journalism, worked on a few stories and wondered as I did so how this site reflects on me. If my goal is a career exploring our society's response to environmental pressures and reporting on the stories impacting that response, how clearly am I really articulating it with pictures of my random wanderings, angsty frustrations, or tales of freeway-less journeys through California and Oregon?
Journalistic or not, I missed a post last week. I just spaced on it. Afterward, the whole experiment unraveled on my end. I haven't posted in a week. Beforehand, I took great care to post every day and, when I knew I might not be able, I prepared posts in advance. Even if I didn't believe in posting daily, in spilling words into a knot of servers and clients, why not test the limits of that belief one month? I continue to be impressed by the work Michelle Rafter has done to put this event together and to draw such varied writers together, so what do I really have to lose by experimenting alongside them?
Despite my own goals, publicly committing to write regularly could be its own challenge. I don't necessarily have to make "blogging," whatever in the world that really means, a habit. Cultivating this site and carefully, diligently crafting it has long been my underlying goal.
I may not have posted anything for a week, but it's difficult to say my experiment unraveled. Over the past week, I've been spending my time pursuing some seemingly fruitful professional leads. In one case, I've been rediscovering the rush of diving deeply into a story I'm enthusiastic to write at the same time as I've begun developing a handful of other freelance pieces. Though I won't discuss what they're about until they're published, I'm happy to say the more I look into them, the more confident I am that they'll be compelling to the public. My increased attention to them is partially responsible for my inattention to the Blogathon, and I don't regret that. The rush that comes from following hunches and reveling in my curiosity beats just about any intoxicant I've tried.
Doing this work, though, isn't about the rush, as hard as it is to believe. There's something that happens as a journalist -- at least something that's happened to me -- that can't be avoided. The stories have to be told because the stories have to be told.
