You’ve grown a lot since the last time we met, readers:
I am
ashamed. I started the Open Mic last year with so many good ideas popping in my
head, I was sure hardly a day would go by without me saying something profound
to the world here. Hundreds, no, thousands of people would be blown away by the
blog and schedule their mornings around my posts. I would become powerful and
famous, get flown around the world, sit in on talk shows, basically be a one man
boy band. None of that has happened, of course; I haven’t posted anything in
seventeen months, struggling through work and school trying to hold my own,
especially now with the prospect of a baby boy on my horizon. My mind has
clearly and firmly been elsewhere for a long, long time.
That
being said, the Open Mic never completely left my mind in all that time; always
there was a little nagging thought to go back and continue. Naturally though,
there always seemed to be something more important to do. Only two things
should have been more important, work and school, but instead everything else became
so. I had plenty of free time to work with, really I did, but I wanted to sleep
in some more, play another game, waste time here or there, anything other than
what could have actually been helpful to me in the future. The worst of it was that this was something I
really wanted to do, but just never
made time for. The only difference between the Open Mic and anything else I did
with my free time was that anything else was easier. It’s demanding to come up
with something to say, figure out how to say it, then hope and pray that it
makes the right impact and has the right effect and doesn’t attract the
internet trolls.
I
confess that I chose easy over rewarding, something simple over something stretching.
Then came the experience I had last night, washing dishes in the back room
alone, looking good in Subway green. Rolling my writing plans around in my head
became rolling a snowball down a mountain; soon I was feeling the same way
about writing as I did when the Open Mic began. Now I have a three-pronged
approach to what I want to write and how I want to write it; with any luck and
diligence this plan can carry me through right to the bitter end.
The
Open Mic was still there when I logged on today, just as I left it.
Interestingly, seeing it again was a confidence booster, not the obstacle I was
expecting it to be. It waited patiently all those months for me to get back
around to writing. My renewed excitement really came from seeing that my ambitions
did not have to die just because I put them on the back burner for too long; it
would never be too late for me to pick up where I left off and start work on
the Open Mic again. Unless I die.
If you
read the Open Mic before my hiatus, thank you so much. If you have come back
with me, thank you again. If you’re new to the Open Mic (and there are going to
be thousands of you, right?) I can’t welcome you happily enough. I think this
time I’m here to stay.
