Oh the pressure to produce meaningful content, oh the guilt for not writing, to hell with it I say!!! I am not going to blog every day darn it, I am going to try to do it pretty often in honor of NABLOPOMO but I am not going to stress over it. Take that NABLOPOMO.

The problem with a blog is that it is so public, do I want my students reading this, do I want my friends and relatives reading this? This public nature tends to rob me of content or make me feel self conscious. My introvert nature rears its lovely back and says, hmmm perhaps not.

I always think of things to blog about when I am away from my computer and pen and paper, I say it out loud hoping to remember "I should write a blog about that" but what usually happens when I sit down to write is that I remember saying the words and the exact quality of the light glinting off my friend's glasses that I said the comment to or who originated the conversation that led the the exclamation but what I want to write about. . . gone.

I like to think of those topics as being on the back burner of my mind, gathering momentum and content while my more conscious self worries about things like working on my paper on medications that will kill you if the disease doesn't get you first, or on pharmacological applications of bacteria cytotoxins or some such catchy stuff.

I write a lot, every day. When it comes to writing for pleasure, which my intent is that my blog will be pleasure writing, I find my dance card filled with the more practical, medical writing that is my education and profession. I am quite often tempted to write about my pursuits in health care but it is so specialized and to the non-medical person boring or incomprehensible that I make the choice not to talk about it here. The other thing that is my somewhat obsession is teaching. I think probably 6/10 blog posts are about teaching and how much I love it so I should probably cut y'all a break and not talk about that.

I enjoy academic writing, don't get me wrong but because I produce so much work that I MUST do the delightful flower in the field of writing that is fiction, or essay just really gets mowed under. I hope it is there waiting for me when I finish school, I hope I have not killed it dead with the stodgy stylings of academia (although I must confess I tend to push the envelope of academic style when it is wedded to my personal writing style). I have not written a short story since I started back to college and as for an essay they have pretty much all been either related to teaching, health care, teaching health care, politics or gender theory.

Here are the thoughts of the day that I had my students do a timed writing on. . .

1. 90% of life is attitude, no matter how much or how little one has to start with, one's attitude toward the world will shape how one ends up.

2. Better to do something imperfectly than nothing perfectly

Ta for now dolls, I have another post brewing and I need to stir the pot

PS I have included the above painting of "St George and the Dragon" by Paolo Ucello 1456 because I love it.

PPS When I was a little girl it made me sad because I thought St George was killing the woman's pet dragon.