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Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Lately, I’ve been pondering the change in my blogging habits as compared to eight months ago when I first started.  Back then, it was easy to come up with ideas and topics to write about.  Now, it’s not.  I coined the image that, right at this moment, I’m like the speeding bullet after it has left the gun barrel and before it hits the target.  Everything is a rapid blur on either side and I just automatically tend to the duties required by the trajectory.  None of those sound very interesting or philosophical.  Hopefully, when I land upon the target, things will become new and interesting again.

Even though my state of affairs is not nearly so all-consuming, there’s a similarity now between me and someone who is involved in a household move.  It’s necessary to collect the cardboard boxes, coordinate an impossible number of delicate time maneuvers, turn off the utilities, juggle family needs – present and future, have goodbye parties, and remember jillions of final details; while simultaneously preparing a landing in a new town or country.  Those folks don’t have a whole lot of time to sit down and rhapsodize about how much fun they’re having, or even to gripe about the inevitable headaches involved.  They are then like a speeding bullet.

If one has done this before, then it’s possible to slip into an automatic-pilot frame of mind and operate efficiently with one hand on the wheel and the other holding lunch or a cup of coffee, but you’re not usually in the mood for chit-chat.  You’ll get back to that on the other side.  That’s me now.

There’s another thing I’ve observed about this new sport of Blogging.  Cohesive Writing.  This requirement is a perfectly obvious surface reality about this medium, but it may be one that many bloggers don’t realize when they get into it.  It’s not particularly a problem with me since I’ve habitually kept up a high volume of recorded thoughts through years of journaling.  Actually, this present observation is a result of my tendency to minutely analyze things that come my way.  And there’s the reason why speeding bullets don’t blog very well.  They are far too busy to analyze minutely.

Blogging is a form of public confession that most people have never indulged in regularly.  How could we have?  Previously, the only medium for that would have been the role of a newspaper columnist with a duty to write down thoughts in an interesting manner and serve them up for public consumption, maybe once a week.  Possibly, regular Letters-to-the-Editors writers know a little of the feeling; but the general public has never had the license or freedom to do what blogging has suddenly opened to them.  Anyone can blog, with no editor passing judgment.  They can blog for absolutely no reason at all, even if they haven’t much to say.  This whole business absolutely rewards those people who have a great deal to say about many topics.

A blog is a very durable medium.  It’s not a newspaper or an electronic flashpoint, which depends upon an audience of the moment, unavoidably limited in time and space.  A blog goes out there and stays out there – pretty much forever – somewhere, anyway.  Even if a person stops blogging, all of the things that they once wrote are still floating about, capable of being retrieved by some search engine in a concrete example of how “thought takes on a life of its own.”  Even if one corrects a blog, or takes back something once put forth, those earlier editions might have been snagged and immortalized by a reader’s efforts; even circulated about to their friends and therefore, still alive on the internet.  And how about videos captured on YouTube?  The most embarrasing ones can go viral in a split-second.

It’s a very good idea to be cognizant of that reality before spilling your guts in words or photographs.  We all need to edit our material just as carefully as if we are writing a paper for publication because we have an obligation to our public and to ourselves.  That’s true, even if we feel absolutely sure that no one is following our lonely little blog space and “What difference does it make anyway?”  We have an obligation to actually “say something” each time we presume to set fingers to keyboard…make a point, come to a conclusion, tell a story, write about an ah-ha moment, share our lives.

Eight months after start-up, are there still any stories to tell?  Oh sure!  There’s all that private stuff.  There are all those secrets as to “who I really am,” but are there still any insights on the chosen topic that I wish to share or has the well gone dry?  I guess we shall soon see when my time again opens up, as I gracefully land on the other side, hit my target of South America, and again have something more to say about my official theme.  In fact, I do have a few ideas forming in my noggin right now.

But, time’s a’wastin’.  I must get out on the highway today to pick up my house guest.  So, here goes the bullet out the door, trying to remember to obey the speed limits and not be too impatient.

Is My Blog, heyboomers.com, to be Born Today?

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

I’m leaving in a minute for a conference with my Blog designer.  Could be, it will be ready to go “on the air!”  At any rate, that will happen soon and you all are invited to attend.  Keep trying heyboomers.com, if you still draw a blank today.  It won’t be long.  We will be building it and adding photos and videos as we go, so this is just the beginning.  Also, there will be a link here, as well.  And, when the book is printed, you can buy it from the site.  So, little by little, something is being created out of thin air.  Especially now that we co-exist in a cyberworld these days.  Have you ever stopped to ponder how the internet has changed our lives?  And what a strange world it is out there, to go hiking around in using only our fingers to do the walking.  Okay, more soon!  Wish me luck!