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| Image from http://edudemic.com/2012/02/technophobic-teachers/typing/ |
As I said when I first started writing these blog posts, I've been writing in a journal since 1991, and after 20 years, I figured it was high time I might start sharing them in a blog. I've had friends interested in knowing what I might have to say on any given subject. When I was out of work in December of last year and going on interviews, I remember telling one hiring manager how much I love to write, and how I've kept a journal for so long, and when he asked me if I blog, I said "No," and he asked me why; and that got me thinking that maybe it was time.
Ten years ago, I changed the way I wrote my journal. All the entries were starting to become predictable and rather boring I thought, talking about what I did that day, and what I ate, and then what I did the next day, and what I ate, and occasionally, I wrote about what I thought about everything. So I decided to keep a running tab on things, and started keeping notes throughout the month about what was going on, and then writing about it when the month was over.
I kept notes on what was going on with me and the family, and work, and my walk with God, and the news (culture), and then wrote about some things I liked from the world of pop culture, reviewing movies and TV shows I liked, or didn't like, along with the music I was listening to, the books I was reading, and, eventually, the people I was admiring for one reason or another. I didn't always keep the best notes, and didn't always write the most poetic stuff, but sporadically, I felt I said something halfway intelligent, in an elegant way. Visiting the internet and reading most of the stuff from the blogosphere, I began to realize that my writing had some style, and a voice of it's own, and unlike many (way too many) of the other writers on the world wide web, I had a pretty good grasp of syntax, grammar, and spelling.
So my intention with this blog was to start posting both new and old writings from my journal, scouring over some of my old journal entries to post some interesting stuff from years ago in the middle of each week, and finding more recent stuff to post on the weekend. I've been doing just that since January, and I've gotten a few people to start reading it, perhaps posting a comment here or there (some of those comments seeming to come from people with their own websites trying to sell me something; gotta love it!).
I find it amusing to note that hardly anyone will read some of my more serious stuff, like "Three Parables and a Rabid Dog: Nope Nothing Wrogn Here" (linked here) or "Strange Bedfellows: Susan G. Komen, Margaret Sanger, and the Dixie Chicks" (linked here), and that the page with the most visits is the one where I reviewed the movie Bride of Chucky (linked here), and that people are visiting it from doing an image search of Chucky and Tiffany. I eventually removed the image to calm them down. I don't want my blog to be known as "the one with the picture of Chucky and Tiffany"!
So when a tragedy occurs, especially close to home, like all the fires in Colorado last month, or the Batman Movie Theater Massacre in Aurora in the wee hours of the morning just yesterday, I don't feel it's my place to comment on them immediately (and I certainly couldn't sum it up as emotionally and powerfully as survivor Christopher Ramos does in the second video below):
I may feel I have a lot to say, and I did post some things on Facebook about them already, including posting that above video, but with all the people talking, I don't feel this blog is the place to add to the conversation, especially immediately with a knee jerk reaction. I don't feel this blog will ever become that. And I never meant for this blog to be that. There are too many other people doing that.
I may eventually write about, and share, my thoughts about some of these major kind of events, after they've had a moment or two to resonate. For one thing, the way I write in my journal is a slow and meticulous process. I keep notes throughout the month, and then write about them in my journal at the beginning of the next month. I've written about the fires from last month already, and will probably share what I wrote about them in here at some point (maybe even next week), but I won't actually sit down and collect my thoughts about modern news events like this movie theater massacre until the beginning of August, and by then, it will be old news. That's okay though. This isn't a news site. It's just my blog.
Another thing I don't like to do is to get too personal. I've written some things in my journal that I don't want anyone else to see. Everybody has private thoughts and ideas about themselves and their friends and family that they don't really want to share with them. Some journal thoughts are just not the type of thing you want to share with the world. It's the main reason most journals and diaries are such a private affair. I also don't want to share a lot of the things that happened with the family because it's kind of like looking at someone's old home movies. It's boring for the people who don't know you - and even then, it's sometimes still boring! Still, I have shared, and will continue to share, a few such moments in this blog, if I feel they won't rankle too many feathers, and it is these blog entries that have a more whimsical, humorous style, such as "A Hunting We Will NOT Go," and "The Joy of Camping... NOT!" (These titles are links to the actual posts).
These blog posts have been, and will continue to be, selections from my journal writings, meaning they won't be up-to-the-minute interpretations of immediate events, but usually more reflective musings about past events. There are so many places on the web to get information about pressing events... I don't want this blog to be just one more droning voice among all the noise. Instead, it's merely entries taken from my journals, which are supposed to be my respite, to help me crystalize and galvanize my thoughts.
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| Information Overload |
And after more than a decade of writing in this fashion, I've managed to collect a lot of them. These once a month reflections on Me & Family, Work, God, the News, and Pop Culture (split into reviews of movies, TV shows, music, and books) means I've written twelve essays, commentaries, or reviews for each subject every year, and since I've been writing in this fashion for at least the last twelve years, that's 144 of them for each subject, and probably about 100 people or fictional characters I've mentioned as Real or Reel Heroes along the way. I don't think I'll ever run out of material for this blog (or any future blog I may decide to start, for I may want to eventually create blogs for the different subjects I write about). Facebook is not the forum for such long meditations, though I will share little things there, such as the poem I wrote for my niece when she turned thirteen, or the story of how I thought Mom had suffered a stroke one day as we were leaving Target, with her hand bunched up and dragging her shoe along the ground, and then quickly coming to realize she was just trying to scrape gum off her shoe!
All I'm doing here is just going through my journals and picking and choosing what I think I might want to share in this blog at that particular moment, and that particular day, and that might just have something interesting to say, and then see what happens...
...and if anybody cares.
(last image from http://wgbyeducation.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/technology-is-too-much-information-eroding-our-brains/)
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