Lame Post Friday

I was trying to write a post on the monthly dinner meeting of the Ilion Little Theater, and I was having a very difficult time with it. At first I thought it was because it was Friday, and Friday has been my day for lame blog posts lately. I was thinking of making it a weekly feature: Lame Post Fridays. A good way for me to ease into the weekend.

Fine, I told myself, write a lame blog post about Ilion Little Theater. See, that’s the first thing to do when experiencing resistance to writing: try to write anyways. Sometimes resistance is plain laziness, and you need to just get going. Sometimes resistance is fear of writing something not very good. By giving myself permission to write something lame, I could get the pen moving (I was writing in a notebook at work).

Somehow that didn’t seem right either. I did not want to write a lame blog post about Ilion Little Theater. Ilion Little Theater is one of the all time greatest things about the Mohawk Valley. I wanted to write a GOOD blog post about it. I even had my concluding paragraph in mind (“Ilion Little Theater has been called the best kept secret in the Mohawk Valley. I’m in on the secret. Now you are too.”) In fact, I’ve written two blog posts about the theater, and I feel they are not contemptible. What was my problem today? I should perhaps mention here that I had actually written a page and a half about the dinner meeting. But I was stuck, and I didn’t want to publish what I had written (and as a further aside, right now I am composing at the keyboard, not my favorite method).

Then I realized the cause of my hesitation: I had not asked people if they minded being in my blog. I realize I put people in my blog all the time. Sometimes it’s some person I ran past, faceless and nameless. Sometimes it is the owner of a dog I know. Then I name the dog, but I don’t even know the person’s name. I’ve mentioned my friend Megan, because I’ve plugged her blog (megactsout.blogspot.com). I thought there could be no possible objection. Dave Dellecese figured in a post, but he was being a celebrity waiter at a fund raiser. I think he expected his name to be public. Oh, and my friend Tracy Robertson has been mentioned a few times. Well, I never asked her, but she subscribes to the blog. If she had a problem with it, I surely would have heard by now.

Then I thought of the opposite problem: what if people would like to be mentioned and I left them out? These are my friends; I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. And so I dithered.

Finally I tried to think of how I could write the post and not mention any people at all. I could report very drily, tell the time and place of the meeting, mention upcoming productions, give information on how to get involved or find out more, and still use my killer closing. Well, I suppose I could still do that. But now I see I am over 500 words of fairly lame post. Happy Friday!