Why Blog the Misery?

I find myself enjoying a lull in the misery. I'm uploading the latest code to the server. It takes about ten minutes and in this ten minutes I believe that the code will fix things and I don't yet realize what horrible mistakes the new code contains. This lull is one of the few upsides of asymmetric bandwidth with slow upload speeds.

The last 36 hours has been miserable. I've done a lot of yelling. Haven't slept much. Did some ironing... and by ironing I mean I launched an iron into drywall.

But why blog the misery?

Because a blog represents a person. If the person is happy, the blog should reflect that. If the person is mad, the blog should reflect that too. If a blog only demonstrates the good side of a person then it's not a very good blog. This isn't to say that all dirty laundry needs to be aired. And it doesn't mean that everything bad needs to be shared... just as everything good doesn't need to be shared. But if there is a high intensity good or bad then in general it should be captured. There is value for the readers of a blog to see all sides of a person, even if that value isn't immediately apparent or even if that value isn't realized any time soon. Note: I'm a reader of my own blog.

Aside from the primary idealism-driven reason... an ideal that I've tried to live up to for years... there are some pragmatic reasons to blog the misery.

Misery, at least in my life, is normally caused by a challenge. I normally subject myself to these challenges.

If I succeed at overcoming the challenge I get to look back at the misery. The reminder of the misery keeps me grounded. Keeps me from forgetting that we're not entitled to many things and that we need to work for them.

If I fail at overcoming the challenge I get to look back at the misery too. The reminder of the misery in this case helps me celebrate my new path... because after a failure you generally have to choose a new path... or you have one forced upon you. Let's say I fail to get either of my companies up and running in ten years. I get to look back at all the misery and say to myself "thankfully I'm not doing that crap any more."

And no matter the outcome, I get to look back at how I handled the challenge. Did I balance my emotional and intellectual self as Deep Survival would recommend? Or did I lose it and throw an iron through the wall?

A blog, at least mine, is the living story of my life. Good, bad and ugly. I look forward to chuckling in 20 years when I look back at these days.

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