To Blog or Not to Blog...That is the Question

So, I extended my blogging vacation a little longer than planned. This has been primarily for me to take time to think about whether I really want to continue to blog or not. Lately, it’s become more of a chore than a pleasure to write. I enjoy writing it but sometimes, it feels horribly self-indulgent to think that people might actually want to read…well, about me.

I started my blog as a writing exercise, more than anything. It’s a way for me to get some writing done every day. It’s a great way for me to capture little moments in life, to paint a picture of my life with words. It’s a great tool to rant and rave. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.

I just don’t know if I should keep it going. I don’t know if people really want to read it or if it’s an obligation. This is not an attempt to fish for compliments, it’s a genuine query.

I think my dilemma stems from my current mood. Lately, I’ve been going through one of those self-examination phases. The rational, logical part of me is immensely content and feeling rather blessed with all the good things in life.

The irrational part of me has been feeling rather lonely and a little discontented with my life. Nothing seems quite…right. No matter what I do, I feel like I should do it differently or better. My writing isn’t going as well as it could and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Everyone I know is super busy living their life and I feel like I’m just standing still. I usually don’t mind standing still but my life has recently felt like an episode of “Sex and the City,” where Miranda, the strong, independent lawyer who thinks she doesn’t need a man, almost chokes on her food in her apartment. She has no one to rescue her from choking but herself and she realizes that sometimes being independent just means that she’s alone. Or, like Bridget Jones, I worry that I’ll die in my house alone with only the dogs to find me and they can’t dial 911. It’s melancholy but sometimes being strong and resourceful like I try to be is not always best.

My slight case of melancholia is probably because it’s suddenly turned rather autumnal here, suddenly. I love autumn. I have blogs and blogs to prove that. I’m just not quite ready for it yet. I want the summer to last a little longer, for the last of my tomatoes to ripen and to ease me into the cooler days/nights and the falling leaves. This cold rainy weather shock is not really easing us into autumn as much as it’s shoving us there without letting us look back and question it. It’s making me feel like time is moving too fast and I’m not moving with it.

I’m just not sure what to do about it at the moment. I suppose I could try online dating again to fight the worry of choking and dying alone. The thought has occurred to me. I just end up talking myself out of it because I’ve had some bad experiences. Also, I’m just not very good at dating. I just would rather skip it and jump right to that comfortable stage where you can sit on the sofa watching crappy television without worrying that you’re wearing little makeup, old clothes and didn’t bother putting your contacts in.

This phase will pass. I know it will. When the sun comes out and life gets busier, I’ll feel angry with myself for feeling so self-indulgent. Worse, I’ll feel angry that I posted this on my blog and gave into my self-indulgent urge to whine.

Which is probably why I’m considering giving up the blog. It allows me a receptacle to deposit my whining. It’s more fun when I rant, I think. However, whining seems to be quite a lot easier sometimes. It’s a heck of a lot easier to complain that it is to say good things.

However, saying good things is infinitely better. So, I’ll say that I appreciate those of you that have read my blog while I’ve been writing it. I appreciate the fact that I love my life 95% of the time. I appreciate my two little dogs who are always there for me and will protect me both from Stranger Danger and the disgustingness of “Hoarders”. Rory often comes to my aid when I make noises of distressed disgust- last week, we watched an episode where a man had 2,500 pet rats running around and when I squealed with horror at the swarm of creatures running freely throughout the house, Rory sat on my head and tried to cover my eyes. This is a true story.

I also appreciate life in general, for better for worse, in rain and sun and in spring, summer, autumn and winter. Having a blog lets me have a way to appreciate that.

So, I still haven’t decided if I’ll give it up. Like Scarlett O’Hara said (and I paraphrase)…I’ll decide tomorrow. I can’t decide today.

And clearly since I’ve already blogged, I’m not giving it up today anyway.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Thursday.

TV Confessions: Hoarding, Coupons and Collecting Weird Stuff

I have a confession to make. I’ve become slightly fascinating with slightly disgusting reality shows.

I blame the networks. During the summer, just like in school, summers are considered vacation time. This means my usual TV viewing of Grey’s Anatomy, Vampire Diaries (no mocking), Top Chef, and Gossip Girl (again, don’t mock) are all on hiatus along with other shows I watch every now and again. In an effort to fill the gap, there are other summer shows but nothing I remembered to watch in time to become invested.

So, I’ve been filling my summer in other ways. I did a lot of reading. I just now wrapped up all five of the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin as well as various other books I’ve borrowed and been meaning to read and return for months.

I’ve also cooked a lot. Thanks to my slight addiction to farmer’s market’s, vegetables have been the focus of my summer dishes. I’ve perfected my caprese tart, become slightly obsessed with beet salad and found a ton of ways to prepare veggies using a grill.

I also published Emmy Goes to Hell. I’ve written some short stories as well as conceptualize my new novel.

I’ve spent a lot of time with the dogs.

In short, my summer has been quite productive and fun in the absence of TV. It’s just that, well, as a fan of a good serialized show…I’ve missed TV quite a lot. I’ve substituted by rewatching all seasons of Top Chef. I’ve also been rewatching one of my all-time favourite shows, Gilmore Girls. Yet…I’ve seen them before. They’re not new to me the way a new episode of, say, Grey’s Anatomy is new. I did have Game of Thrones for a while and what a great while that was but at only 10 episodes in the season, it didn’t last long. Now it’s True Blood and that has been greatly disappointing this season. I still watch it out of habit but, well, it’s just not very good and thus, not very fulfilling.

So, as summer has started to wane, I’ve been turning on the TV and seeing just what’s on. Thanks to my parents, I already knew about Billy the Exterminator. This is a show that follows, you guessed it, an exterminator in Louisiana. Trust me, it’s funnier than it sounds because Billy looks like someone who fell of a 1980’s hair band with a penchant for the Harley Davison look. It’s actually quite funny especially when Billy has to don his mask (looks a little like Skeletor from He-Man) and his feather boa (helps prevent bee stings. Trust me, there’s nothing quite as bizarre and hilarious as watching this tough exterminator in a long black trench coat wearing feather boa and Skeletor mask fighting a swarm of bees. Billy has a brother too but he’s not very bright although he, too, looks like a 1980’s hair band reject.

I try not to watch Billy at home. I did slip once and caught myself watching it but it was about Canadian geese and I find those quite interesting anyway. Since my parents record it on their DVR, I normally wait until I got there for a weekend and see if they have any new episodes to watch. It makes me feel slightly less guilty of watching bad TV if it’s not on my DVR.

However, it doesn’t stop with Billy. A couple of weekends ago, I was caught between tasks and errands and I flicked the TV on and caught myself watching Hoarders: Buried Alive. I confess. I’m a little hooked. I wrote a blog once about how much the show Clean House annoyed me because slobs are rewarded for their…slobbishness by getting someone to help them clean their house. Hoarders is different. I find myself watching it for the psychological aspect of it. These people have actually to some psychological problem where they literally cannot throw things away. While the show tends to be a little vile at times, particularly when the house is so cluttered that rats are living beneath the mounds of stuff, it’s still oddly fascinating to me. I also caught just regular Hoarders this weekend. I don’t like it as much as the Buried Alive version because I think it tends to be a little too dramatic with the Black Information Cards of Doom that they use to inform viewers of additional information. However, does tend to be a little more disgusting. For example, there was a woman this week who was clearly severely mentally ill who fancied herself a cook. She had no working fridge, dead rats buried underneath trash and she apparently bakes cookies with mealworms and doesn’t tell people. Also, she left a dead squirrel in the butter dish once.

I can’t help it. Disgusting as it is, it’s also fascinating. We’ve established that I have a dark streak- it’s most attracted to the darker side of human nature. I’ve always been fascinated with personality disorders. Hence my fascination with Hoarders.
From there, I saw another show being advertised: My Collection Obsession. It featured a lady who is obsessed with baby dolls and treats them like real kids. Worse still, her husband and daughter let her do this and think it’s interesting. Well, the husband likes it because it means she leaves him alone but…still. There was also a boy who loves vacuum cleaners and collects them. He loves them and has a side business fixing them. I think he was 15. Apparently, he loved vacuums since he was a toddler. While I think it’s a bit odd, I actually think it’s pretty interesting to have a ‘calling’ in life that’s actually quite useful even if it does mean a large collection of vacuum cleaners to go along with it.

Then another day, I came across Extreme Couponing. I didn’t like this one so much. I find that, psychologically, extreme couponers are just another variety of a hoarder. Sure, there are the decent ones who clip the coupons to create care packages for the troops or to give to a homeless shelter. But every couponer also has “a stockpile” which is a very well organized room/closet/basement filled with shelves that are so full, it looks like a grocery store. One man was proud that he had 1000 tubes of toothpaste that he had for free. Then there was a lady who wanted to help her daughter-in-law get a stockpile of her own. So she went to the store, managed to get over 30 bottles of laundry detergent FOR FREE with her coupons and then gave her daughter-in-law five of them. Yes, five. How generous.

They might be well organized but these extreme coupon people are still hoarders. They spend 35-40 hours a week clipping a coupon. They have GIANT binders full of well organized coupons. Their stockpiles boast more of each item than a store generally keeps on the shelves. Sure, they’re saving money but they’re doing it for the sake of getting stuff for free not because they really need the stuff. It’s a different form of hoarding. It’s usually born out of needing to save money and I respect that but if you can go to the store, get a weeks’ groceries for free, do you really also need to get ten more of each item just because you can? Do you really need 71 bottlesw of mustard because you have 71 coupons? Do you need a cart full of diapers because they end up being free EVEN THOUGH YOU DON'T HAVE A BABY????

It just seems like Extreme Greed to me. Plus, where the heck do they get those stacks and stacks of coupons to begin with? Also, if I got stuck behind an extreme couponer in the grocery store, I think I’d be annoyed. It takes them FOREVER to check out because they watch the cashiers like hawks. Also, if I went to a store to use my SINGLE coupon for a bottle of detergent only to find out that some greedy cow had just bought 30 of them and didn’t leave any for me, I’d be annoyed. LEAVE SOME FOR THE NORMAL PEOPLE!

That’s it as far as my guilty TV goes. I think once the regular TV season starts up, I’ll cut back on my crap-TV viewing. However, I will say as a writer, I do find it insightful and interesting to study the personality types of these people.

Of course, the side effect is that I’m very, very conscious of how much stuff I have in my house. Also, I’m even more conscious of making sure my house is clean. Also, if I see some clutter, I immediately declutter the area because I have a secret fear that I might be becoming a hoarder without realizing it.

Also, after seeing the disgusting Fridge Lady, I did immediately go to my own fridge to make sure everything in it was fresh and not blackened, dirty and 20 years old. Oh, and yes, she actually ate the things from her fridge that were literally 20 years old. This is especially vile because, as I mentioned, her fridge wasn’t working and hadn’t been for many years.

Sorry. I’ve probably disgusted you now, haven’t I? I apologize. Blame the Hoarders.
Although, really, since I’m the one watching the show, I’m really too blame. Oh dear. Maybe that means I have some psychological problem where I’m some form of voyeur for watching these people. Will that be the next show: Voyeurs: Buried Alive by Disgusting TV. Perhaps I ought to go back to reading, writing and cooking and just wait for the real TV season to begin.

Although perhaps I ought to wipe that show I saw advertised about Waiting for the Apocolypse off my DVR first.

I have to face it. I’m a hoarder of a different nature: I hoard things in my brain about freaky people to write about as characters in my novels.

Can we call it research instead? I like that better.

Happy Thursday!