Babies, Blogs and Phoning It In

There's some movie starring Reese Witherspoon that had a line in the promo that went something like this: You have a baby? In a bar?! As I sat down just down I thought of this, then amended it to fit what I was thinking, which was: You have a baby? And a blog?! This is pure silliness, of course. I suspect millions of people with babies have blogs, maybe more. It's just that mine wouldn't fall asleep tonight, kept waking up, and I finally had to scoop her up and hold her to sleep, which almost never happens--just figures she'd pick a night when I waited until the last minute to write AND I still have pneumonia.

You see where I'm going with this? Not yet, I guess. I was also thinking about my newly conflicted relationship with The New Yorker magazine. I love The New Yorker. I've been reading it pretty religiously since middle school. I used to wait for it to come in the mail, savor it, anticipate the next issue's arrival once I'd finished. Now, although I love the magazine just as much, its arrival each week haunts me like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story; I lie in bed at night imagining I can hear each issue's little heart beating, the beats sounding like the words: Read me, read me, read me, or we'll accumulate to such an extent that we'll smother you in your own apartment.

The thing is, I just don't have time to sit and luxuriate in The New Yorker the way I used to, and this makes me sad, sometimes, but mostly it makes me feel stressed out, so every once in a while I will have a New Yorker binge, and stay up until 3 in the morning maniacally speed reading issues, or force myself to take one with me when I go out and read it as I walk to gain extra minutes in the reading process. It's ridiculous, really. And although I could just chill out about it, and set the issues aside until I go on vacation or have some time to read (which I anticipate happening in 2010), somehow I can't. And so then I am left with the question (are you on the edge of your seat?): What is the point of reading The New Yorker if I'm not actually enjoying the experience?

How is this relevant, you may be asking. To anything, you may add, if you are a little bit mean. Well, it's about tonight. The pneumonia, the baby, the blog. I am writing this right now because I made a promise to myself a hundred plus days ago that I would do so unless I absolutely could not. Actually, I didn't even say that then but made it so when I physically couldn't write. I am not writing for any other reason, now, really, but this one: my pledge to myself and the fact that I will feel disappointed in myself if I fail myself.

Is this worth it? Is it meaningful? Or is it forcing yourself out of bed when you've had too much to drink to down an aspirin and a glass of water because you know you'll feel marginally better in the morning if you do? I'm not sure. But ha! I have a baby. And pneumonia! And I wrote this anyway! I actually just typed a question mark by mistake after the word "anyway." Or maybe it was a Freudian slip.