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Friday, August 01, 2008

Snake in the Garden

Back in the early days of this blog, before I knew any better, I would write a "state of the blog" piece every month, on the first of the month. Now that I'm a more "mature" blogger, I tend to do this only on the anniversary of the blog, which is May 2. So consider this a (temporary) reversion to form.

There was a point in June when I seriously considered quitting doing the blog. not only were my numbers down, I was having this dispute with this other blogger that I didn't understand over things on that person's blog,

But then I started having dreams. Vivid dreams. Disturbing dreams. Dreams that pointed out my mortality to a degree that would wake me up and not allow me back to sleep. At the same time, it seemed to help answer unresolved questions that were lurking just beyond my conscious awareness. Sometimes, essays would come nearly fully formed. A couple became blog posts.

Another factor mitigating in favor of continuing - or maybe it's the same factor - is that I realize I have more to say, whether anyone's reading it or not. And occasionally, when someone like Shirlee Taylor Haizlip or Glenn Weiser, who thanked me for this piece (and in return, I corrected the misspelling of his name), write, it makes it worthwhile. As did a 13-year-old girl writing in response to my piece on my vitiligo.

I got a Twitter account on July 11. That would be July 11, 2007, made one post, then not again until this past week, when I wrote: "Saw a piece on ABC News about how some companies such as Comcast, JetBlue and Dell track Twitter for customer complaints. Very cool indeed." So, I'm trying it on for size. Don't want to have a "300 days ago" notation on it, so I'll see.

I also finally added SamuraiFrog to my links. One of the curses of being in a cubicle is that pretty much anyone can see your computer, and sometimes, when I'm checking websites at lunch time, there are materials that don't disturb me but probably would disturb others. So I just check him at home, where my wife can be disturbed instead.

Coming up this month: four or five posts that I started weeks or months ago that I never finished - it'll be cathartic, at least for me; a feature I was doing regularly, but somehow dropped; on August 28, my annual FantaCo publication piece, already written in my head, but alas, not electronically; plus all the usual nonsense (yikes, I have to take more pictures of Lydia).
***
Me and Johnny B.

You are an Airbender!

Airbender

The Sky Bison taught the first airbenders how to bend the air around them. While they cannot fly, airbenders can soar in the air for long distances by using a glider. Most important to airbenders is the concept of non-aggression. When they fight, they do not attack but defend themselves through circular movements that confuse their opponents.

Which Element do you Bend?




(Photo by Mary Hoffman, July 2008.)
ROG

3 comments:

Greg said...

Occasionally I think you're the only person reading my blog. You're the only one who comments anymore, it seems (and I do appreciate it). I don't know if this happens to you, but when I was back in PA, a few of my friends told me that they enjoy reading the blog, so that made me happy (even if they never comment). I occasionally think of closing shop, but it's not like it's costing me anything. If I only have five readers, so be it. It's a fun thing for me to do. When it's not fun, I don't blog!

Keep it up, sir. I'm terribly impressed that you manage to post something every day.

Anonymous said...

You can comment on this better than I, being a librarian, but I get the impression that very little of recorded history has been recorded by, y'know, regular folks. While we may have records of laws and wars, historians seemed to have pieced together What Life Was Like from bits of archaeology, a letter here, a bit of folk art there.

I think blogs are changing that.

What seems immensely mundane to us now—you writing about your auto loan, or me riffing on some piece of junk mail I received—could be revelatory to someone a hundred years from now trying to piece together how people did business (or anything else, for that matter) in the early 21st century.

Seems to me it will be a lot more difficult for future historians to rewrite the past, or tell us how people thought and felt.

Lefty said...

I can attest to Comast reading twitter. I recently posted on Twitter about problems with my Comcast email, and a few seconds later someone from Comcast responded to me, and even helped me out with a problem I've been having.