Three weeks…

That’s what it took me to post that last piece of epic literature I wrote.  Three weeks and a couple of days. So basically it took me almost a month to write a thousand words about an Albatross, and how much I was like one, simply because I have a hard time taking off.

If that’s not a sign of literary greatness, I’m not sure what is.

Now just to be fair to myself, It didn’t take me that long to write it. Not at all, in fact I had written most of it in under 45 minutes. I was at a bar and the creative juices were really flowing that day (along with frosty mugs of my favorite pale ale), and I hammered out what I perceived at the time to be one of my best conceived works ever!

Then I looked at it the next day.

Wow. Did I have some work to do.

I was overcome with the amount of editing that needed to be done. This sentence was too long, that word was used too often, this phrase didn’t make any sense at all, and what in the actual hell am I trying to say anyhow? So I cut and pasted and re-wrote and cut some more and after about a half a million times of reading and editing, I decided to launch it out into the cyberverse to my seven readers and wait for the grand reception.

The result: one of the lowest read posts I have ever had. And to make matters worse, I opened it up and edited it some more because I still didn’t like what I had to say… or the way I said it.

Why? This is a harmless blog, not my autobiography. Yet each time I start to write a post I go crazy during the editing stage, and won’t release anything until I feel it’s as close to perfect as I can make it. The funny thing is, I really have no idea what perfect looks like since I have no formal education in writing and I am not much of a reader either. In fact, one of the reasons it takes me so long to write a post is because I can’t stand to read my own writing!

My quest for perfection is so bad that despite my16 published posts, I have almost twice as many drafts written that I haven’t published yet, simply because I don’t like them. For that matter, none of my posts have been how I am going about getting back into shape, which was the original intent of this project. Sure, I’ve talked about my reasons for wanting to get healthy, the intentions I have, the positive attitude it takes and why you should do it with me, but I haven’t actually written about doing any of it.

Well, this stops today.

The only way I can get better at this is to do more of it. I mean that’s what they tell you about anything right? The more you do something, the easier it becomes. You practice, form habits, work on your shortcomings and look for guidance and feedback.

So with this in mind, it occurred to me that I need to employ this mentality to my blogging career, I mean if I don’t get this thing off the ground, I’m going to be stuck working at a shipyard for the rest of my life. Well, in all honesty, I pretty much have accepted the fact that I’m going to be working at the shipyard, and I’m kind of okay with it. I’m just using it for the inspirational “We gotta get out of this place” effect. You can see where I’m going with this.

So here’s my plan, and this is where you guys come in…

I am going to attempt to publish a blog post every day for the next thirty days! That’s right, every evening I am going to push out a blog post until I get over this fear of it not being perfect. I mean let’s face it, if i’m writing something every day, it is probably not going to be anywhere near perfect. In fact, the odds are it will probably be down right stupid. But if there’s something stupid that needs to be done, I’m just the man for the job.

I hope to get some feedback from you as well. Nothing too drastic I hope, like “You suck at this… focus on the shipyard!”, but maybe some critiques on length, scope and readability. I’m starting to see the importance of feedback, and if I’m going to reach out to folks and convince them that we can get back in shape at any age, I need to get better at this blogging thing, not to mention actually start working out.

Of course I know I can’t do it all on this site. I mean, I know nothing of exercise science and I can’t write about how much I hate jogging every day (actually that’s not a bad idea..) so I’ve created another site that you will be able to visit soon.

Give me a day or two and hop on over to “THE OLDER I GET, THE BETTER I WAS”.  Here you’ll find stories of my youth, my thoughts on aging, fashion tips and pretty much anything that bangs around in my head. What better way to fill thirty days of blogging, than to dump whatever madness that’s in my head out on the internet. It may not be extravagant, but I guarantee it’ll be entertaining.

The bottom line is I’m sick of waiting for everything to be perfect in order to do what I enjoy.  All joking aside, I’ve done this in many of areas in my life and the result is I’ve never got to do a lot of the things I’ve wanted. I’m always waiting for the right time, or to make sure everything is perfect before I start… and that time never comes.

None of us have a lot of time on this earth, and if there’s something you want to do then dammit, get up and make it happen, and to hell with perfection! I just hope these posts aren’t so bad that I loose any of my seven readers. After all, without any readers, a blog is nothing more than the diary of a madman (great album).

I guess there’s a fine line between blogging and insanity.. and I may have already crossed it.