Nature vs. nurture?

I am not a blogger by nature – as I'm sure anyone who has been reading this blog has guessed.. When I first heard of them I thought they were an odd idea and couldn't see their appeal – not for the readers, anyway.   I am beginning to come around – in terms of some kind of understanding at least. And I have read blogs that I have appreciated (as well as ones that I have not.) I am a reader, but I'm not much of a blog reader...There are some I've begun to read if they catch my eye when I have a moment, but I'm not very good at following... (blogs). But then, I'm trying to change (some) of my ways.

Rather than the previous sad attempts I made at this blog which are evidenced in its archives, I started a number of months before I thought I would have the guts to publish any of it. (It turns out that I wrote two initial “I'm trying to restart the blog” postings...Very different ways of saying some of the the same things. This includes some of the remains of the one that didn't get published....)

Every time I think I have something to write, I write it and stash it in a file. I think I've mentioned that before. So what you are reading may well not be what is happening just now...I figured if I had a small stockpile that just needed a tweak before I put them out I might manage to keep ahead of the curve. That is part of why you will find this has headings and sub-headings.

So anyone does actually read this and they like, for example, reading about me making an absolute catastrophe of a project I tried and looking back on it – hopefully with some insight as to where it went off the rails – they know they want to read bits of the Learning Curves grouping, for example. It will make it easier to skip over installments, in theory at least.

It also makes it easier – at the moment – for me to write them. There will be lots of sections that will fit just as well under one grouping as another, they are all connected by that central pivot, my experiences and thoughts and processes. The truth is, I have become a very sporadic writer. I used to spend huge amounts of my time writing. I couldn't hold things in without getting really full, so I wrote about them. I know lots of people who did the same – when they were younger. I never thought I'd lose that, but I stopped finding the time. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night needing to write.

Or, I suppose, mostly. Because it is just before 3 and I got out of bed because I certainly wasn't going to sleep, so here I am. Certainly when it comes to this blog I am a sporadic writer. Sometimes things will come in waves and then I won't write again for months, or years. (I am also a bit of a sporadic artist/maker when it comes to that...) So writing in themes and entries is an easier way for me to stockpile them. Because that is what I'm doing.

It is one of the tools I'm using to make the changes I clearly need to make.  I am trying the nature vs. nurture approach...if it is not in my nature, perhaps I can create the change by nurture...

Life is all about change and most of us

have as much or more of it than we can handle at any given moment. In the past few years I've been in a whirlwind of change – but as we so often do, I'm not sure I've been changing with it. Certainly not at the rate of the changes surrounding me. I've been lagging sorely behind in my ability to keep up and cope.

Since I appear to be changing everything else in my life, why not see if I can initiate some crucial positive changes in how I work, how I write....The thing about change en masse is that it kind of wipes the slate clean. Enough change basically makes you start again – almost from scratch but with a more advanced toolkit to start with and a better idea of how to develop a plan and move forward, provided you are someone able to learn from mistakes, that is.

And that is what some installments are going to be about – not just my changes and challenges, but ones that so many people face – and some of the tools I use to try to make things work. Like this blog is becoming a learning tool...and maybe it can be a teaching tool too, at some point.