What I know about myself

* I read library blogs.
* I often feel unloved by my family.
* I have a love/hate relationship with paper: I love beautiful paper - the colors, texture, patterns, weight - but hate all the paperwork and paper accumulation that comes with teaching.
* I have a father-in-law who I often believe is demented.
* I can't stand hypocrisy: smokers who claim to hate smokers, the conservative religious who condemn gambling and drinking but become gamblers/alcoholics (or allow those close to them to become so)... and especially people who claim to hate hypocrisy but practice it in their daily lives (it occurs to me that perhaps these people also hate themselves for practicing the acts they claim to be against, and thus the circle continues).
* I crave transparency: and feel extrememly hurt and offended when people feel like they can't be themselves around me. I'd like people to be themselves and then feel free to disagree with me, defending and arguing their viewpoints rather than pretending to agree with me .
* People close to me feel like they cannot be themselves around me: I am not approachable.
* I am not against lying necessarily, but I feel the lies should be Useful Lies.
* I feel like I've lived my life in 3 stages: my MN self (before marriage), my pre-kids self and my post-kids self. All of these selves know that the others exist, but they cannot relate to each other. I can only connect with the last. The other two are like dead memories - things I barely remember about myself, a person who I used to be but am no longer, so vague and unassuming that I often wonder if they ever happened at all...
* I feel liek my life was a waste before I had kids, and often regret that I waited so long.
* I didn't think I wanted kids until I had them.
* I don't want to come across as opinionated, but I am and do.
* I don't like to toot my own horn and consider myself relatively humble, but I think with certain people I have a superiority complex.
* I feel the least creative at this point in my life than I have ever felt.
* I am desperate for a friend: someone non-judgemental and unconditional---someone who can teach ME how to be that way.
* I want to take myself and my life less seriously but have no idea where to start.
* I would like to own a bookstore, a scrapbooking store, a web site and an English school.
* I am controlling but also feel controlled by others.
* The less money I have the more it burns a hole in my pocket.
* Sometimes I wonder if my husband and I are compatible.
* I don't feel like I can say anything negative or critical about my life because everyone I know will say I told you so.
* I often feel like my family and friends do not support my decisions - especially my decision to move to Ecuador. They make me feel very guilty about this decision at times.
* I have become the kind of person who probably wouldn't say anything if given the wrong change in a store - and I'm not happy about it.
* I'd like to learn how to be more easygoing.
* I want to sound intelligent, academic, and sophisticated, but since I had children my mind - as Fay Weldon so rightly put it - has turned to porridge.
* Writing a blog and sharing it with others is a huge risk I've taken - and it sometimes feels threatening while also very liberating.
* I admire people I barely know and am fascinated by their lives.
* I sometimes think that in another life I could be a stalker.
* I secretly love reality shows, and am embarrassed to admit it.
* I've always liked talk shows and am enthralled by the ways people live their lives and the decisions they make.
* I'd like to be a writer, but I don't know why, except that I'd like to write the books I want to read.
* When I was little, I wanted to be a singer but was too practical to ever consider it. I still love singing aloud.
* I can't dance but would like to be able to.
* I used to love basketball but have not seen a gmae in maybe ten years.
* I am not generous with my money.
* I like soft jazz and hate it when it's too loud.
* Scrapbooking makes me incredibly happy for some inexplicable reason.
* I am fascinated by blogs, especially those of little consequence, and how people write about their lives (voyeurism is such a nasty word but I suppose that is what it is).
* I don't consider myself a racist, but fear I may be classist - and don't like knowing that.
* Living in Ecuador sometimes makes me feel completely helpless.
* I wonder if anyone misses me.
* My children make me feel both capable and incapable/incompetent at the same time.
* I have stopped trying to potty train my preschooler because I have no idea what to do or how to do it and nothing is working.
* I would rather spend time with my sisters and family than anyone else: family is an essential part of my life.
* I am boring and self-absorbed.
* Lately I have trouble concentrating when other people speak to me.
* I like to teach myself things - and hate to be taught.
* I've never had a job I've really liked or felt comfortable doing. I wonder sometimes if I simply have no calling.
* I want to be the type of person who takes pictures everywhere.
* I wish I were an artist.
* I rarely feel like I fit in.
* My sisters call me a nerd - and really mean it, and not in a nice way.
* I procrastinate.
* I no longer clean my house.
* I think that deep down I must have a sense of entitlement - and that troubles me.
* I blame other people for my shortcomings.
* I almost never go to church.
* I am very reflective and self-critical.
* I bite my nails.
* I have almost no self-discipline.
* I used to be a good speller but could now care less.
* I care too much what people think about me.
* I'd like to have thicker skin.
* I sometimes wish I hadn't been born in the U.S., but rather England or an isle in the Caribbean.
* It irks me when Americans get upset over British spelling.
* I want to recapture the feelings of lazy hazy days of summer.
* I love life but sometimes wonder what the point it: I am not suicidal.
* I often have a heavy heart but don't know why.
* I am extrememly stubborn and don't take instructions/commands easily.

No writing going on here. Anyone else with the same problem?

Can it be writer's block if I haven't even started writing? What can I say? What do I have to write about? How can I have this drive to write but absolutely no idea of what to write about or where to start? This doesn't make any sense... I read other people's writing and blogs and (most) everyone sounds so eloquent and knowledgeable, and then there's me... feeling a little like I'm playing grown up (playing writer) or even a little like I'm drowning in my own language. Nothing I say sounds natural, everything is contrived, no response or post just seems to fly off of my fingertips.

When they talk about strengthening the writing muscle, they really mean it! I need to just get over the first few humps and then it will come to me. Please bear with me as I do. Or just ignore me - no hard feelings.

So why in the world have I created two new blogs? Well, I love the idea of having a blog to keep family and friends up-to-date on my daily events, but I want to do more with my blog, like use it as a spot to write, reflect, ponder, and delve into issues that only I am probably interested in. And the other blog is a semi-professional blog - after reading some I have decided that blogging is a great way to share information between colleagues and other people in one's field. So I have a "practical" blog, much like a daily journal of activities, a semi-professional blog, to do my professional reflections (Karen would be proud!), and this is my writing blog, a place for me to wax lyrical or just plain put up random thoughts, without having to put my family through the painful experience of what's going through my head...