Writing

Please accept my sincerest apologies if you are coming over to read a little bit here thanks to my son's referral from garagejournal.com (please feel free to click on that link to check out my son's forum page as he writes and illustrates the progress he is making on his farm).

I am dabbling in 'public writing', which is a little similar to public speaking. You put yourself out on display for strangers to read or ignore or critique and there are moments (I had many such moments yesterday) when you simply want to crawl back under your rock and live a quiet little life behind closed doors.

I am writing a column for a handful of papers now. I also have a blog site within an Ontario publication. Once that site receives over 500 'hits', I will be paid a small stipend per hit. So ... I took a calculated risk and advertised that fact on my Facebook page:

Does anyone mind if I do a little self-promoting in this spot? If so, stop reading right now and carry on to the next item in your news feed ...

If you are still reading, I am still here writing. And that is what this is all about. My writing.

I am writing a column for a handful of papers and I have a blog space for an Ontario publication "MyKawartha" (a Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes community online newspaper). Once my blog has over 500 'hits', I will be paid according to the number of people viewing my posts.

So ... I am attaching the link to my blog. If you like it and think that it is worth following or passing along to someone feel free to do so. If not, please ignore this blatant misuse of Facebook space and carry on with your day!

http://www.mykawartha.com/blog/1594830

I thought it was a small risk. I have 31 Facebook friends and I am a little bit certain that a small majority of them don't invest a great amount of time reading other people's updates. So I thought that perhaps I would reach another handful of readers.

You can imagine how terrifying it was when my son's girlfriend shared my link with her (much larger) group of friends. Suddenly I was feeling a small amount of anxiety about what I had written on my 'pay-per-view' blog site and how palatable it would be to a younger crowd. My day got busy and I decided that it was a waste of energy to worry about it any further.

Then ... I started noticing 'hits' on this blog space from "garagejournal.com". Oh. my. gosh. If I was a small bit anxious about what the younger set may think of my highly scrutinized, edited and condensed versions of my writing were over at myKawartha.com ... I was starting to sweat a few bullets when I thought of the readership from a garage forum in my personal blog space here...

I come here most mornings to purge my thoughts. Sometimes they are worth reading. Many times they are not. I am fearful that if I started scrutinizing every single word that I wrote, that I would get out of the habit of writing. So I write. I write alot. Much of it is tedious and mundane. But when I feel something very strongly and simply let my fingers fly over the keyboard ... every now and again I come up with something that may strike a chord with someone. So I write.

If you wish, please feel free to mosey on over to my more 'professional' writing spot at myKawartha.com . The articles that I have posted over there are some that are a little more polished and (hopefully) with enough substance to keep the attention of someone that I don't know. Everything that I write over there has originated 'here' ... in the privacy of my own personal blog.

What you read here is pretty raw and untamed. And I would imagine pretty boring as well. Please don't hold this against me. In the flourish of words that come, every now and again comes a nugget worth holding onto.

So I write. I write freely here. This is who I am. I would apologize for the fact ... but wouldn't it be safe to say that most of us have a little bit of that going on in our world? The face we show the world ... and the one we hold a little closer to the chest. The person we let out in little bits and pieces when we are safe and secure enough to do so.

Welcome to my safety zone. Enter at your own risk.