Can Someone Find My Motivation for Me, Pretty Please?

More Pictures!

Started last week

My dream job, in a perfect world, would be to be a National Geographic photographer...to be able to travel the world, be brave/bold with my camera, and (in theory) not be too intrusive into people's lives but tell a story through pictures?  Yes please!

Or I would be a singer/dancer in a chorus in Broadway musicals, but I don't have the dancing or singing skills for that, so NG, while way far out there, is more realistic.

In this age of blogs, facebook, and Twitter, everyone and their brother has a blog and feels the need to share about their lives with the rest of the world, warrented or not.  My sister introduced me to a foodie blog that I've been reading daily, out of a mixture of curiousity, repulsion, confusion, and amazement.  Through that blog I discovered that half the world appears to have food/fitness/life blogs, which is kind of overwhelming.  I am pretty sure that the other half of the blogging world has travel blogs.  And EVERYONE uses their blog as their own personal soapbox for whatever social justice/environmental/development/political/religious issue they want to press at the moment.

I do the same, I know.

I would LOVE to have a successful travel blog, full of gorgeous pictures I've taken in France, Morocco, Mali, Senegal, DC, wherever.  For that you need three things, ideally: a good camera, writing skills, and motivation (or at least, not laziness).   I have an old "Peace Corps mostly indestructable" camera that has become so scratched from my purse and travels that the screen is next to impossible to view anything through, but it can still take decent pictures when it wants to (or when I put the effort in).  I can write: I was obviously never an English major, but when I put forth the effort to think in only one language (it took 3 attempts to write this sentence without using French), I like to think I can write decently.  So, when I want, I have two of the three things necessary, but I frequently lack the motivation, or just suffer from unfortunate blog laziness and it's something I am actually quite ashamed of.  I know that if I put in the effort, I could have a freakin' awesome travel blog, but alas.

Frequently, as I am doing something, or right after, I find myself composing great stories and humorous blog entries in my head.  Then when I get to a computer, I lose focus, forget, or just don't want to type a blog entry.  It's sad and comes from the same place that my procrastination in high school and college came from.  I have discovered that I work best under pressure, or at least I can best focus on the tasks I have to do when I have an impending deadline, or several other activities to do at the same time.  I am the same way with my work here in Senegal.  That's how it goes with my blog entries: I start but don't finish them, ideas pile up, I avoid writing, and when I realize that it's been a month or so, I scramble to finish and publish them all.  But the quality is missing.

The effort is missing to create an awesome and fresh blog design that reflects my personality.  Sometimes I have wondered if I should just forget the blog and get rid of the cloud that hangs over my head telling me to write (or more so, the constant task in my planner that just says "BLOG!"), but I bully myself into considering that quitting, which is something I do NOT do. [Note: it took A LOT of mental work to make myself cool with leaving France early to return to Senegal and not feel like I had "quit".]

I want to share things with the handful of readers I have living vicariously through my silly and exciting adventures, so it's time to stop being so lazy!  I have 5.5 weeks left abroad and I need to maximize them without feeling tied to my computer or feeling the guilt of not posting either...time to find some balance!


Update: Spending two hours last week revamping the look of this blog has made all of the difference in the world!  It's still not perfect, but putting it together was just the creative outlet I had been craving and now I find myself excited to finally finish all sorts posts I started ages ago, or planned to start and still haven't.  We'll see if this trend continues...