Anti-Fluff Blogs or Rainy Monday Mornings in Madrid

You know what they say, if you can’t talk about anything else, you can always talk about the weather. Today is Monday, the day I usually do the laundry and hang them out to dry – on the rooftop clotheslines but I’m not, because it’s rainy and cool. Sound boring? It is, to me, now.

My blog entries have always been a kind of “No Fluff Zone” for me and my readers since the beginning. “If it’s worth writing, it’s worth writing well and in detail,” I always say. I know that “Writers write” and all that, but I’ve never been one to talk about what I had for breakfast, sore throats or bathroom habits. But sometimes when I scan back through the entries they look very long, maybe even long-winded and exhaustive, maybe even boring to readers more accustomed to the “short blurbs of life” as hosted by some of the social media websites.

The truth is, time passes and sometimes it’s difficult finding topics which I think my readers will enjoy and appreciate. My joyful purpose is to bring Madrid/Spain to you, many of whom pine to be here “living the dream” as I am. Sometimes I get bogged down in everyday life and find it challenging to make the mundane seem interesting. I recall living in Ohio and even the most minuscule events in Spanish life was exciting to me.

Let’s look on the positive side. When you become efficient at one thing it’s time to start the next thing and achieve same. It SHOULD BE a never-ending cycle. Right? It’s when we stop seeking the next thing that it all becomes mundane. Don’t get me wrong, life has NOT become mundane for “MadridMan” in Madrid. FAR from it! But I’ve become somewhat efficient and comfortable, albeit still stimulating when I’m out and about.

For me, blog entries MUST be informative, detailed, taking on all sides of a topic, searching and/or exposing both the good and the bad, presenting each one with a point or, at the very least, a question. My readers deserve no less, which is mainly why my blog entries are sporadic at best. I am happy to share my trips into town when something unusual happens or when I visit someplace new. But if I go straight to the movies and come straight home afterwards, do you really want to hear the same story with little variation? Nah. I know, I know, it’s my job to find subtle differences and present mundane things to me as unusual things to others.

This is one of those blogs I write and, at the end, I ask myself, “Should I really publish this one? Is it worthy? Is it fluff? Do people care?” Maybe they’d care more about the delicious “Tortilla de patatas con jamón serrano” I made for lunch on Saturday, or the Spanish friends whom came over last night for dinner at 9:30pm to watch “Los Premios Goya” (Spain’s annual movie awards) until nearly 1am – all of whom had to get up at 5:00 or 6:00am to start their Monday workday, or caring for the elderly, or doing the shopping, or even my frequent power-walks along the newly redeveloped “Madrid Río“. (I can practically hear you nodding in the affirmative about all of the above, “Yeah! So why doesn’t this MadridDude write about THAT stuff?!?! Now THAT’D be interesting!“)

Maybe I’ve just answered my own question. 🙂

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” – The Shawshank Redemption (movie, 1994)