It feels like I need to catch up, to get doing stuff Right Now, to make my mark on the world as soon as possible, but it also feels like it might be too late already.

Sometimes I get this feeling when I’m working at a show where the exhibitors have creative or crafty items. I see all the things they’re selling, and I see how they’ve done it — they’ve taken the plunge and are making and selling their Stuff. They had enough confidence to actually go out on a limb and make it happen. And I see things that I could have done myself, and things I wish I could do, and things I can’t believe people pay money for. And it makes me sad, because I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to ever make that leap.

Sometimes this feeling comes when I’m surfing the web, reading blogs, browsing on Etsy, and it’s pretty much the same. People are actually out there making a living from their writing, or from their crafting. And even if they’re not making tons of money, they’re still doing it. They’re not making excuses, waiting for the time to be right, or dwelling on their own inner demons. They’re just doing it.

Along with the sadness that accompanies the fear that I’ll never do any of this is a sense of total overwhelmedness (if that’s not a word, it should be). There are too many options. Everyone says you have to find a niche, but how do you decide? How do you write about photography and exclude pet care and craft ideas and personal experiences and education and shopping and Shakespeare? How do you make jewelry out of soldered glass and just stay away from shrinky dinks and recycled items, and sewing and shadowboxes and calligraphy and the nine billion other things I want to make?

I am not made to be niched. If I were to have a ‘focused’ blog, that would mean I’d have to have a dozen blogs, or maybe more. One on every topic.

Short Attention Span Girl isn’t just a semi-clever title that happened to be available as a domain name. It’s me. My brain is a-swirl with possibilities and ideas and  regrets about how much of my life I’ve already wasted not doing the millions of things I want to do.

So I guess I’ll just have to do one thing at a time and try not to let it make me crazy.

I can’t post something new and witty and even comprehensible on a daily basis. But maybe I can post once a week. So that’s the new plan. And if by some chance I have more than one thing to say a week, it’ll be a bonus.

In the meantime, I have all my old posts to move over to this new Wordpress platform, so you may be experiencing some deja vu as things that you thought were a sad and distant memory are suddenly right in your face again. But they’ll be posted with their original dates (if I can figure out how to do that), so they will remain in their originally intended position in the space-time continuum.

Well, it probably goes without saying that today is one of those scattered days. I want to suck all the information in the world into my brain all at once, and settling on only one thing to think about or learn just isn’t acceptable.

Let me share with you some of the things that are bubbling around in my head right now.

First, I have checked out from the library, as usual, far more books than I could ever hope to read. It’s a sickness. But at least it keeps me from purchasing all those books and sending myself to the poorhouse. (Wait, I think I already am in the poor house, but that’s beside the point.) Here are just a few of the books currently littering my bed, floor, car, desk, and bookbag: Digital Designs for Scrapbooking, The Rough Guide to Ebay, 8 Minutes in the Morning to a Flat Belly, The Little Capoeira Book, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (book on CD format), and Quick and Healthy Cooking for Dummies.

Oh, but there’s more. Here are a few of the books I’ve put on hold at the library: 201 Icebreakers, Get Hired Fast, and The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Naturally, I’m currently reading a book that I didn’t even get from the library, but bought at Half Price Books many moons ago, and yesterday I decided to rescue it from my bookshelf of neglected books, which includes books about career tests, the advantages of being an introvert, boosting creativity, things to do in Seattle, and endless other topics.

There are 358 items on my list entitled “Big List of Things to Write About.”

My To-Do list is three pages long and includes everything from filling out my absentee ballot to learning how to use the edit features in Adobe Acrobat.

Oh, and there are about 700 ebooks I want to write. And I have 18 jobs in my stack of jobs to apply for. I’ve already applied for 10 this week, but I keep finding more!

Luckily, my actual paying (ha) job requires minimal thinking and effort, so I can zip through most of that work in drone mode.

So, here I sit. Writing about how many ideas and thoughts and plans I have, and yet still not making headway on any of them.

Oh, but I have succeeded in picking out most of the cashews from my Costco jug of Extra Fancy Mixed Nuts. At least there’s that.

What this means for you, dear reader (or maybe I actually have two readers, but that doesn’t make you any less dear), is that you’ll have at least 30 substandard bits of writing to keep you entertained as you gear up for the holidays. Prepare to be underwhelmed by all the fascinating things I have to say.

Maybe I’ll even post more than once on super special days. Or maybe I’ll have to write up some junk and not post it until the next time I have internet access. Either way, I hereby vow that I Will Write Every Day. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at this as I bumble along.

I haven’t yet figured out a reward for myself if I actually accomplish this gargantuan and thankless task. Any ideas? Better yet, any thoughts on good, juicy punishments for dropping the ball? Although my psychology learning tells me that rewards work more effectively than punishment in altering behavior, I’m not convinced. Fear is quite a motivator.

So now that I’ve made this declaration of my intent to partake on my own pseudo-wimpy version of the bold adventure that thousands of people are beginning today, I guess I should get to it. Hey, wait — this one counts for today, right?

Long* live NaBloPoMo!

*In this case, Long is defined as 30 days.

But maybe I should try to put a more positive, hopeful spin on things. Write about what I want to be able to do, write about what I’d like to get sorted out and cleared up. That’s probably a better idea than just listing my complaints. It has an illusion of forward motion, anyway.

So here I am, thinking about all the things that are knotted up in my stomach and my mind, trying to figure out a way to sort them out and give them some sort of direction.

I’m just going to have to whine about everything for a while, to get it off my chest. Then maybe I’ll be able to go back and talk about solutions and plans and all that optimistic crap.

First of all, it doesn’t seem like my house will ever sell. The last house had four offers the first weekend, some even over our list price. Not this time. It’s been on the market for three weeks with nary a nibble. It looks great, and the price is reasonable for the neighborhood and all that. I guess it just takes time. But the longer it takes to sell, the longer I have to contribute to paying the mortgage, and the longer I have to keep living with my mom, because I can’t afford an apartment on top of what I’m already paying for a home I don’t even live in.

The worst part is that my paycheck is so crappy that I only have left about $400 a month to spend on food, gifts, cat supplies, kickboxing dues, cell phone bills, gas, car maintenance, and actually buying anything for myself. And saving money is out of the question. As is slowly buying things I’ll need when I move into an apartment.

So I’m applying for jobs like crazy, but nobody seems to want to hire me. A couple months back when I decided that my current job was not for me, I got a few interviews, but then I was promised a job here that’s apparently not going to exist, and now the job market has forsaken me.

And I don’t even want to talk about my current job. There’s just too much that annoys and angers me here.

Back to a previous topic, there’s nothing horribly wrong with living with my mom. We get along fine, and I get some free food out of the deal. I just need to live on my own. I never have, in my entire life, and it’s time. When I have a bad day, I want the luxury of buying a bag of Oreos and sobbing in front of the TV. Or take a long hot bath with a book. I need to be able to come and go as I please, not checking in with anyone.

Not that I want to do anything particularly shady, but I just need to not worry about worrying anyone by not coming home at a particular time. I don’t want to always explain where I was. Maybe I just want to drive around, or sit in my car in a parking lot and read, or lurk at the library or bookstore for hours. I need that kind of freedom to just do whatever I want to do.

So it’s nothing against my mom or Ed. They’ve been more wonderful than I could have imagined, letting me live with them so long and even letting me bring my cat. But I need a change, and that can’t happen until the house sells. Having an income of $400 a month, when I have a master’s degree and two bachelor’s degrees, is decidedly uncool.

There are all kinds of other things contributing to the feeling of an elephant sitting on my chest, but I’ve probably whined enough for one day. I’ll get back to the getting-in-shape, extra-long-commute, behind-on-charity-auction-helping, stifled-creativity, frustrated-writer-and-crafter, stalled-business-owner, can’t-seem-to-get-enough-sleep issues another time.

And if you actually read this all the way to this point, thank you. I’ll post something positive one of these days, I promise!

I have a few saved up blog entries, since I first decided to actually try to keep up a blog, but I’ve been too chicken to post any of them.

I mean, what if my writing is crappy? What if they’re full of errors? What if they offend someone?

But I’ve decided, too bad. I need to do this, to see if I can hack it, to have an outlet for my thoughts and ideas and feelings and discoveries, so I’m going to do it. If you’re offended or have other negative feelings about what I write, I guess you’re free to not tune in to this website in the future, right? Besides, who’s gonna read this thing anyway?

I’m posting all those old posts with the date I originally wrote them, so the chronology of my wayward thinking will be intact.

I hope taking this leap will give me the push I need to actually share my thoughts with my one or two readers on a regular basis. I make no guarantees though. If this is the last thing I post, I wish you a happy life and much success.

Thanks for reading!

I keep taking career and aptitude and interest and personality tests, but I don’t know why. They all tell me I should be a writer. Well, a writer or a member of the clergy, but I assume that’s just the universe’s way of teasing me. Maybe my subconscious is guiding my results on all these tests and skewing them toward writer, but even if that’s the case, perhaps especially if that’s the case, then writing is what I’m meant to do, right?

I just love the whole idea of it: jotting down observations of the world around me, working with words and phrases to make them fit the ideas in my mind, imagining people and places, and fiddling around with the English language until it’s just so. The range of things I could write about seems limitless. I want to write about dogs and feminism and Shakespeare and gopher shooting and business travel and self-help theories and shoe shopping and divorce and teenage angst and middle-age angst and reality television and Crystal Light. I feel like I need to write about everything all at once, like there’s some urgent need to get everything about myself and the world around me down on paper right now.

Then there’s the fear. If I never write anything, I can go on pretending that I’d be a really awesome writer if only I had the time or inclination to do it. If I actually give it a shot, I’ll be exposed as the pathetic fraud that I really am. And once I’ve agonized over a keyboard for long enough to eke out a few sad little paragraphs, I’ll have to face the bitter reality of editing, revising, and proofreading. Once I’ve gotten all those words out of my head and onto paper (real or digital), I don’t want to have to see it again, try again to tame those words that only get more restless when disturbed.

My mom thinks I’m afraid of success, not failure. I think maybe I’m afraid of both, but becoming a success certainly seems like less of a hardship than failing miserably and spending the rest of my life in a job that requires a name tag.

One problem is that I am a planner. I like to gather information from every conceivable source, assemble it physically and mentally in some kind of logical way, and check all sources again to make sure I haven’t missed any crucial or trivial tidbits, before I can begin any project. This is especially true with writing.

Case in point: I just spent about two hours searching the internet for blog tips, blog information, blog marketing techniques, blog profitability enhancers, blog posting ideas, and blogs about blogging. The word “blog” is starting to look funny. Right now, while pecking out a few words here and there, I’m searching the library system and Amazon for books on creating weblogs. It’s a sickness. I have to feel completely educated and prepared for a task before I can attempt it.

The sad part is that, once I’ve thoroughly researched every aspect of a topic, I lose interest and never actually do what it is that I spent all this time preparing to do. Writing is a little different, because I never lose the urge to write. Instead, I just run out of time or energy, but that nagging voice that tells me I should write remains. This leaves me in a constant state of nagging agitation and unfulfillment. Which brings me to where I am right now. Writing this treatise on why I can’t write in an ironic attempt to actually get writing, to get some oomph to crawl over that first speed bump.

I’m hoping that this blog format will be the magical cure to all my writing woes. I know it won’t really do all that, but it’s fun to think about. I need a place to put stuff I’ve written, a place that will be waiting for me to keep putting stuff there, a place that’s not too picky about how eloquent or life-altering the stuff is, but a place that will actually be viewed by at least one or two other people, maybe for feedback, maybe for dialogue, maybe just for confession or venting or navel-gazing. I hope this blog will do that for me, motivate me, give me a reason to keep on writing.