Week 30: Blogging on Blogging

So like, as you may have noticed, it took me about five extra days to get a blog post up last week. I've always been a chronic procrastinator, but that was a bit shameful, even for me.

This summer has been a really strange mix of brief periods of high-energy excitement, followed by weeks and weeks of monotony. I feel like I've pretty much exhausted the topic of LeakyCon on this blog, and although that weekend did spark a lot of ideas and creative energy for me, it's more of a "doing things" energy than a "writing things" energy. And unfortunately, none of that stuff is going to be done until I get back to school, back to friends who can help make this stuff happen, back to witches and wizards and magical beasts....

Which leaves me with a whole lot of nothing to write about. Actually, that's not quite true. All of this doing nothing has left me lots of time to think about things, so I'm sure I could craft an intelligent, meaningful post if I really sat down and tried. The problem, then, is the trying. Having the discipline to sit down and write, sometime before 11pm, and then forcing myself to re-read and polish my writing, would be a really great life choice on my part. As someone who hopes to one day be able to make a living writing things, you'd think I'd be a little bit more invested in this, right?

Well, I wish I was.

Something I'd never really considered until, like, just now, was how lucky I am to have this blog. Although I sometimes think of it as a chore, or worse, a pointless, self-indulgent waste of time, it really is a privilege.

 In the first place, living in a part of the world where constant, (mostly) uncensored access to the internet is available is pretty freaking great. On top of that, being able to afford my own laptop and internet service. And finally, having a voice that is heard. Of course, my voice usually doesn't reach far beyond my (amazing, wonderful, beautiful) friends and my twitter and tumblr followers - and I'm perfectly okay with that! But statistically, across the world, the average young woman doesn't have the same chances as I do to make her voice heard. She may not have the unrestricted internet that I do, or a laptop, or the freedom, as a woman of a certain race, faith or political belief, to speak her mind without fear.

So does that mean that I should guilt myself into writing something "meaningful" every single week, or putting more time into my posts, so as not to abuse my privilege? I don't think so. I think that almost everything I write on here has some meaning - and after all, it is as much a personal journal as it is a public forum, and the decision about what is meaningful is solely up to me.

I do, however, think that taking a broader view of this whole blogging thing will do me good. No, I may not be the last surviving member of a doomed civilization, desperately documenting centuries of culture. And I may not be travelling hours and hours each week to get internet access and tell the world about the political violence in my remote region. But I think I do have some sort of a duty, as a person who dedicates quite a bit of their time to writing. However I stumbled upon it, I have discovered a voice, and I just really think I need to use it.

Goodnight, bloglings