I have been maintaining a blog since 2001, when a friend purchased jasonbarmer.com for me. Since that time, I’ve posted with a wide variety of frequency, whether once a week, or once a quarter. Lately, I’ve been on a once a month rotation and have wondered why my posts have been so sparse.

It didn’t take much reflection to discover the two main reasons for my linguistic drought.
Adjusting to life with Jude has been a significant part of it. Some parents have a child or two and seem to be able to go on about their business as if everything is back to “normal” again in a month. We aren’t in that category. It’s taken us a while to learn to carve out time to read and reflect again. We certainly have a new “normal” now.

I wish I could just blame it all on Jude, but the biggest reason I don’t post more to this blog is that the quest for perfection has killed my love for writing. I am constantly tweaking every sentence, watching for errors in grammar, reading and re-reading in an effort to create something that can’t be criticized. It has stifled the flow of words to the page because I’m asking all the wrong questions:

– Is it perfect yet? (Usually asked in a different form, but this is the real question)
– What will this or that reader think of it?
– Is this drivel?
– Isn’t there a more relevant, interesting topic out there?

Typically, I have about 10 articles started but never finished before I post something. These questions are a big part of the reason.

I writing this in an effort to recognize the perfectionism and cleanse it from my perspective. My goal is to post at least three times a week. This may mean that you’ll find more grammatical errors or misspellings in my posts, but I’m willing to exchange the fruitless search of perfection in order to experience the joy of writing again. It will certainly be worth it to me, even if I don’t polish off each article with a clean tie-off.

I am guessing that this love of perfection in writing mirrors my life in some way, so perhaps this effort will rattle me in ways I don’t expect. I’m hoping so.