Guilt: The New Blogger’s Epidemic

I don’t always like blogging.  There, I said it.  Some days I hate waiting for the next uber-frustrating event in my life to happen so I can bitch.   Agitating observations that inevitably come my way are fun later, but not in the moment; especially when that moment makes you late for work. I want to be more positive and live an Oprah/Buddha-inspired life. And I feel guilty on occasion wondering if posting these articles doesn’t send negative mojo out into the universe.  Damn you Oprah!

Some days I feel guilty that a post is going to offend a friend or family member.  Will I upset a co-worker, client or bestie who stumbles upon this place?  Perez Hilton seems to have omitted guilt from his lexicon.  How does that work?  I know that guilt (and worry) are useless emotions.  Remorse should be left for offenders of real crimes, not everyday situations.

But I work through the guilt  and carry on.  Somedays I am genuinely inspired to write.  It’s usually in the mornings, so I’m up, out of bed, and off to my computer with a cup o’ Joe in hand.  Those are the days you see the extra-long posts.  Other days blogging is cathartic.  I want to get something, anything off my chest.  Those seem to be the feistiest entries.  Words like “dipshit“, “moron“, and “blissfully ignorant boil on the butt of humanity” grace the pages.

There are other times I feel guilty when too much time has passed between posts. Life takes over and there’s no time to get words from my brain to my mouth, let alone onto a page and spelled correctly.  The dog needs to be walked.  Triathlon training calls for a 118 minute bike ride.  I wanted to call my mom.  Eight times?  I only posted eight times in the month of May?  How can that be?

So, there I am, feeling guilty, guilty and guilty about blogging.  But as I cleared my mind with a little harmless Blog Surfing I started to realize I’m not alone.  There are people writing blogs and working on big ideas everywhere who feel guilty for not doing, being, or having accomplished enough.  I love Just One Week, a blog about a woman who turns life and goals into manageable one-week chunks.  If the woman who makes her life’s ambition to get stuff done can feel guilty, well then so can the guy who puts a big smart person’s spotlight on the idiocy of life.  And over at The Happiness Project, a blog dedicated to testing both tried and untrue paths to happiness, they even talk about guilt.   There’s even guilt at The Kitch’n, a food blog dedicated to inspiring cooks and nourishing lives.  Organized people feel guilty.  Happy people feel guilty.  Full people feel guilty.  Michael Jackson’s “You are not alone” is wafting through my head right now.

And so I continue to write.  Somedays it’s for me.  Somedays it’s for you.  Somedays it’s to put into the universe that something stupid happened.  And that’s okay.  Because Oprah is going off the air next year, and my guilty friends and I will no longer have to feel guilty.