Omphaloskepsis

I cannot just write for myself

It’s a conundrum.

I love to write, but, somehow, I consistently seem to lack the motivation to write exclusively for myself.

My Mama (and Papa too – when he was alive) is an incredibly private person. As a girl, she kept a diary for herself, but she would never, ever write publicly about her personal life (that’s very much against her nature)… and, for that matter, neither would my younger brother, nor would my wife. Thinking back to a time not so long ago, I also remember one of my close friends (a woman in her seventies) asking me with befuddlement, “Why are you sharing so much publicly?”

Maybe blogging makes me feel somehow more significant; or maybe it makes me feel that my existence is being affirmed by others. Perhaps I’m simply needy for attention.

So I blog.

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On striving to maintain an appealing blog

Writing is an activity that sucks me in. If left to my druthers, I would be content to sit at the keyboard and write personal reflections and poems all day long. The words come to me more easily than the world does, if you catch my drift.

On the other hand, I don’t want to inundate online friends and potential readers with too many blog posts. (writing my recent series on blogging tips has helped me concretize my blogging strategy in my own mind.)

So here’s an irony: on the one hand, I may find myself inspired to write a short poem (think: haiku), which comes more quickly than a piece of prose or deeply reflective blog post, but then I start to feel that I may be posting too often… and while I may very much want to expound at length upon weighty matters close to my heart, I too often end up pushing those off for later – even though what I want to do (exclusively for myself, that is) is to keep on writing and publishing.

In way of example, I shared a recent limerick of mine 19 hours ago, and then I uploaded a new haiku some 8 hours ago, which reflected my mood at that moment… and now I find myself sitting and fretting about when to publish this blog post. “Am I blogging too often?” I ask myself. “Am I being annoying?”

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My expertise

The other thing is – what do I actually feel comfortable blogging about?

I’m so tired of all the noise online. I’m so tired of people opining on things that they know so little about. Sure, I have thoughts about what happened recently in Israel and what is happening here even now, but who am I, exactly? I’m certainly no expert, nor pundit, and I won’t pretend to be.

On the other hand, I’m a fairly informed consumer of the news in Israel (and the USA); and, gosh darn it, I am deeply invested in the politics of the day. Despite my hesitancy, I may soon give in and share a few simple reflections upon the political fallout from the recent hostilities between Hamas in Gaza and the State of Israel… because my country’s endless political quagmire is nothing short of flabbergasting to me. Who would have thought that we could very well be moving towards our 5^th round of nationwide elections in three years⁉️

Still, what I’m really an expert on, and perhaps the only thing that I’m an expert on, is my feelings… and how much navel-gazing should I subject my readers to? I ask myself: How much omphaloskepsis would I want to read from other bloggers? After all, if somebody else’s behavior irritates me, I aim not to replicate it.

*sigh*

I suppose that posting poetry remains the safest bet, in terms of its universal appeal… but, occasionally, other words do leak out upon the screen.