Four Days, Four Posts

Who are we kidding? Obviously I've decided to take this NaBloPoMo thing seriously. I haven't posted this much since I got into grad school. Not to the point of being on any kind of list or having the official NaBloPoMo icon on my page, but still.

In many ways, I've waited my whole life for just such a phenomenon. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was never going to work for me--c'mon, a novel in a month? I recently took 14 days to write the first 30 pages of a Grey's Anatomy spec. (And in case you've never seen a tv script: It's mostly white space.)

I have severe quality control issues. As in: Nothing leaves my grip until it's been polished to a blinding perfection. Or I've worn myself down to an incoherent daze through lack of sleep and psychological abuse. So no way I turn out a novel in 30 days.

(Ironically, I will be turning out a spec pilot in 30 days. I have some notes, some characters, and some general plot ideas. On 12/1/06, I'm turning whatever I have into my department, for entry into something called the Josh Schwarz Fellowship.)

But NaBloPoMo? That's a month-long obsession I can buy into!

If the text of this month of entries is "Can Kate keep up her sworn vow to post every day for a month?", the subtext is "Can Kate blog for 30 days in a row without accidentally/on purpose stumbling onto a topic that would be better addressed offline?"

This to me is the great, delicious dilemma of all blogs, everywhere. The more raw, the more revealing (I'm looking at you, Dooce, and you, Mimi Smartypants, and most especially you, Shasta McNasty), the better. And yet, blinding honesty has its limits.

Since the dawn of the internet, total strangers have taken offense at the most innocently-meant posts--and of course, some not so innocently-meant. So as a card-carrying member of the Not a Nut Club, I try not to air laundry better dragged out in the privacy of my own apartment/diary/classroom. Because God only knows what kind of shit THAT would stir up. And I am a deeply conflict averse person.

But no, seriously. A blog shouldn't be an excuse to say/do inappropriate things. If such things are going to be said or done, say or do them in real life, to or in front of the relevent audience. Maybe easier said than done, especially from the far side of six years of doing improv. The ninth or tenth time a violent wave of humiliation washed over me, I just stopped caring.

It gets old. When I am well and truly embarrassed, I almost black out and when I come back, 2 seconds later, I have no idea what's happened in the intervening time. I have to surreptitiously check my pants to make sure I haven't voided my bowels. (This particular fear goes back to the physiological feeling of embarrassment, akin to being squeezed out as if I were a tube of toothpaste in the hand of a giant 3 year old. )

I mean, how many times can a human being go through that kinda of trauma and not develop some kind of defense against it?

Boy, I have wandered way, way, way off topic. All I meant to say was: It would be easy to cook up 30 posts if I could give voice to every petty, immature, ill-considered impulse that ever crosses my mind. But that's not really my style. If I'm going to commit to an idiotic personal decision, I'll do it in the real world, where the consequences will be so huge and unmistakable as to provide a valuable and v. funny anecdote I can share ... on my blog.

Sigh.