[Don't] stop me if you've heard this before

[Gratuitous Daisy picture]

Leslie Norris said there are only about seven great themes (love, creation, death, the expulsion from Eden, etc.) and every poem is merely a re-treatment, another look, at one of those themes.  Don't try so hard to be original, he told us, because you won't succeed.  You won't find something new to write about---but you can make it seem new in the way you show it, he said.  Good advice---but I'm afraid that quite frequently, I do talk myself out of writing things for the simple reason that someone has already said them/done them/shown them, and I feel like further comments would be unnecessary.  (Not only unnecessary, but self-indulgent.)  I suppose the internet makes it worse---since one can so easily find the many other treatments of one's potential theme.  There's always someone with the same recipe, a more beautifully-lit photograph, a child more obsessed with sprinklers (hmm . . . maybe not that), a more profound personal essay, and so forth.

Thus, each time I think of something to write, I have a long internal struggle about whether or not it's interesting enough to be worth a hypothetical reader's time; whether I am justified in talking about something that someone else has already said more cleverly.  But I was re-reading this and thinking, what writerly good will a blog do me if I self-edit myself into oblivion? So, Hypothetical Reader, I will try to stop coddling you.  I will assume you are capable of taking your presence elsewhere if you are bored, annoyed, or otherwise unhappy.  I will be pleased to bring you unoriginal recipes, amateur photographs, and repetitive ideas.  And perhaps this new lack of inhibition will translate into more frequent posts, to the extent my other reason for sporadic posting will allow it [hint: it has tiny hands, bright little eyes, a milky mouth, and a bottomless stomach].