Friday, December 02, 2016
Adolescent
The blog is 13 years old this week.
See all the dates in the archive there to the right?
That is me writing my fingers to the bone.
I have had a good time for the most part. Enjoyed it.
A few times, I announced that I was giving it up.
Some kind readers urged me not to.
If that was not enough, after a little while, I got the itch again and resumed my work.
A lot of people keep journals. Mostly private. That is not me. I am not much for closeted confessionals.
On the other hand, the public nature of the blog does cause me to harness myself in.
Language for one thing. There are only so many "fucks" I do not want to give.
My aim is to try to write clearly and grammatically. I ended my work life as a writer and so once grooved, the practice is worth maintaining. Of course then I had editors and copy readers. Not now.
Just the jerky spell check which "corrects" incorrectly more often than not.
A perennial pain.
The public nature also makes me think. There are not many posts where I just pull it out of my ass. Sometimes it takes half a day of "thinking" or marinating. Occasionally, I go back later and either insert or delete something that came to me after I felt I was done.
Another outcome of the blog is that I finally learned touch typing. I wrote about this recently. Now that was a change. Valuable time lost hunting and pecking is gained back.
Thank you Mavis Beacon. You are the best.
Writing the blog also gives me purpose in my geezer years. I need that stimulus, obligation, activity. The volunteer work on the condo association helps too but that is sporadic and not me alone. There, I fulfill my need to engage in teamwork. Another nice exercise. Practicing what I preached for many years.
So happy birthday to my blog and many happy returns.
Someone asked me if I go back and read the blog at all.
No. Not really. It is over for me. I am like an actor who does not go see his or her movies. I lived it once, I wrote about it once and that, by gosh and by golly, is enough.
