not using not

When I started this blog, I lacked a title… and well, really a purpose. Although, in all fairness I don’t think a blog needs a “purpose” per say, but you see my point. Anyway, I really just started using Blogger just to see what it was like. I got to the title part, and thought, oh shit, I have to have a title. Now, if you knew me, you’d know that I over analyze and agonize over things like names. To me, a name, whether it be for a website or character, should give a feel to the piece. I never just randomly name things. Come on, I spent 3 weeks debating acceptable titles for my website.

Trying not to think about it, I focused on my blog’s purpose. I decided to focus on my short writing – using the blog to encourage myself to write a little bit every day, and hopefully, use some of it towards a story I’m writing. With that in mind, I decided to use a short piece I wrote one morning in the coffee house part of a local bookstore (how I love Moleskine pocket notebooks!). Hence, the first blog became “not drinking coffee”. I then decided that was a fun title for my blog, and voila! Blog titled.

Now, this may have inadvertently caused a domino effect. I used the “not” in my second post, entitled “not going to the gym”. Now two is just coincidental – not a pattern. But then, I used it for a third post and now a fourth time (and I already know what the fifth post title is). So, after four, almost five times, a definite pattern has emerged. The question has not become, do I continue using the “not” and become entrapped and potentially stuck. Or do I go ahead and break out of the model now?

This I agonize over. Forget world hunger, genocide in Darfur, civil war in Iraq, or any one of the many problems afflicting the world. I guess that’s how people continue to live their lives without going insane.