This blog is a thing I'm doing now.
Unchained Creative isn't my first blog site. And this right here little post is definitely not my first one. At this very moment, I'm experiencing vivid deja vu. I've been using WordPress since taking "Online Journalism" back in 2007 at Northeastern University during my undergrad days. I'm harkening back to that time, a time when "digital" amounted to archaic podcasts and WordPress blogging. Brands weren't even on Facebook yet.Dark times.
The time is nigh, methinks, to revisit this whole blogging spiel. For myself, and myself alone. Guest blogging for friends aside, and wholly separate from my work-related writings on our company site, on Social Media Today, or for wellbeing site CureJoy, I want to write for me. I want to enjoy writing again. I want to explore the topics that interest me and blurt out the sidenotes that make strangers on the subway laugh and that sparked several coworkers in the UK this past June to tell me I should be writing a blog. At least I know you two will read this once in awhile.Despite the self-inflicted fears of future failure, my feet are plunging fast into this not-so-new foray into online writing. I've received empowerment, encouragement and some sage advice to just fucking do it. Let's fucking do it.I write for work. A lot. Every day. I've gotten burnt out, lost all sense of my brand's "voice" and have, at times, become a jargon monster. Welcome to the world of being a marketer extraordinaire. I'm certain 20-year-old Dinah (that's me) would not recognize the "writer" I've become.If you're reading this and you know me, I'm certain I've regaled you with epic stories of my infinite, half-started sprints at writing. Writing what, you ask? Clever you.Writing anything and everything. Existential-crisis driven poetry. More than five abandoned short stories. Snarky healthy eating recipes, written as much for entertainment as for culinary use. And of course 287 raw, unedited pages of a memoir-style book of essays based on my romantic misadventures. I thought I'd turn my pain and failures into "creative gold."What the majority of my writing endeavors have in common is that they remain unfinished. Raw manuscripts and scribblings fill up my Google Docs, real life paper-and-glue notebooks, my Evernote app. Any new or old way to write, I've tried it. And I've always come up short. Sure a burst of inspiration can hit and I'll have a flurry of productive writing work riding fast and high on the muses wind stream. But then the frost sets in and word famine takes over my mind and fingers. Writing, I do not anymore.
About three weeks ago I was visiting friends in Boston and was struck by an idea for a short story. The subject matter scared me. It was as if I'd blurted out my worst fears, attached them to characters I knew better than I knew myself, and was watching a movie reel in my mind of this story unfold. In less than 24 hours I'd outlined the entire story and penned 11 pages of micro chapters that were soothing me. Feeding my fear, so that I could meet it at the door, sword in hand. It was a way to not cower behind my fears. By ignoring them. It was time to face them head on.I haven't touched that piece in over a week. I can't bring myself to sit down and write, not even just 10 minutes a day, in any kind of structured way.I have manic-depressive writing habits. Bursts of manic energy and inspiration, followed by long sullen spells of inactivity and self-criticism. It's fun, really it is. (No it's not).That's why I'm starting this blog. To give myself accountability to my writing. I want to put it in words, on the interwebs, out in the ether.However you want to say it, I want to put it all out there.Finally.