Thinking and not writing....

I really am thinking thoughts these days, although you'd never know it by my blog. I have rather a lot of notes I've taken about blog posts I want to write. But an odd thing happens when I sit down to write them. All the enthusiasm sort of drains away. I've written and deleted four or five blog entries in the past two weeks alone. I'm not sure what's behind my lack of enthusiasm, but I thought I'd try to sort it out by freewriting about it.

I find I get enthused or "charged" about a subject when reading a book, listening to people, reading a magazine article, or reading other people's blogs. I think and digest, and then have dialogs in my head about the subject. I might go online and read more about it, especially if it is a news item, like immigration or the war in Iraq. I've taken notes on my thoughts (a good way to pass the time during a boring sermon or waiting for an appointment) and get prepared to write my thoughts. Then I get in front of my computer and ...drain...... I feel like it's just not that important (does anyone really want to hear my thoughts on parenting?). Or maybe I feel like the subject is too complicated for me to pull apart (immigration, for example). Or maybe I don't actually feel qualified to take on an issue (like whether the alternative gospels are a valid source of historical information supressed by the early church, or whether they are simply apocryphal writing of a deluded minority).

I end up feeling I need to read everything and from all sides before expressing an opinion. Otherwise, I'm talking empty air.

But in the end, don't we all have biases? Are any of us really without a starting point from which we judge what we read and hear? I think one of the most frustrating things for me is to encounter someone who wants to be heard, only they are not willing to hear. They think they are hearing and not judging, but... I count myself in there, btw. Guilty, as charged. So I end up doubting my own conclusions, or, if I don't doubt them, I know they aren't going to stand up to the scrutiny of others. They are my experience and my biases and my points-of-view, obviously skewed by my own a priori position.

I'm not a writer. I have no burning need to express my thoughts on paper (or on the web). I'm a talker. Oral communication (heavily supplemented with my hands) is my strength. I've learned a great deal in the past 8 years of having to express my thoughts in writing on the web, and I am a smarter, stronger communicator because of that. However I know that for me, learning is best accomplished by being able to talk things through. I wonder sometimes why I even want to keep writing, but I do.