Sleep in. You read that right. Wake up when your body is ready to wake up instead of only after hitting the snooze button on your obnoxious alarm seven times. (By the way, there are other sounds you could choose besides “hateful buzzer.”)
Grab a cup of comfort-coffee (the kind of you grew up on), and cuddle up with your computer, a sleepy puppy, and a days’ worth of work. Get up to refresh your coffee and come back to this:
I think of myself as a humble person. That’s why I have my own blog. (Actually, it’s two blogs and an online portfolio.) But modest as I am, I must confess that in the past I was somewhat of a legend. A grammar legend. My friends and family would never admit it because, well, they were probably jealous, but it’s true.
I knew the rules, the exceptions, and when to pause for effect. Like here. Not only did I know how to diagram a sentence; I could do it in less than a minute. I was even part of human sentences that were then verbally diagrammed by our eighth grade class. I was always the comma. (Thanks Mrs. Gilbert; that was a good week.)
These days I’m feeling less confident and certainly less cocky (about grammar). I remember the terms, and I remember the rules…but I cannot remember which terms go with which rules and don’t even get me started on those exceptions! And pauses? I fear that I pause too much: it’s disruptive. I need a refresher course in grammar.
For months, I have tried to write a successful first blog. I first tried to write witty pieces, but their second and third drafts produced material that can only be described as lacking. In other versions I confessed that I had no idea what I was doing, but begged my reader to trust me anyway because, ignorant or not, I intended to blog well. (That draft was promptly discarded. After all, who ever heard of being honest with your audience? Laughable.) Desperate drafts recounted stories like the time I watched a grandmother eat her grandson’s chili in silence at theBarnes and Noble Starbucks café while he played with her iPhone. Still, others tried to incorporate all these elements, failing as miserably as if it hadn’t incorporated any at all. As a compulsive perfectionist (a possibly hypochondriacal condition), these failed attempts and continued lack of blog, troubled me greatly.
Then, one night, as I gazed up at an overcast sky that was anything but inspiring, a solution came to me: change the rules. Ignoring the basic principles of syntax, I decided to create my second blog first. This would take all the pressure off the first, perfect blog, while simultaneously making any reader a returning reader. That’s right; I’ve instantly created michellejunot.com blog groupies. Welcome.