Posts Tagged ‘writing’

…Wherein the Blogger Blogs about His Blog

// November 3rd, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal

Thanks to the inspiration of a long-time and highly-productive friend, I’m returning to daily blogging. It’s really nothing more than a simple matter of priorities. In the past, it simply wasn’t worth investing the time to pump out random blatherings that no one would likely read except for me.

With a new mindset, I’m back for three useful reasons: 1) it will force me to fully flesh out new thoughts and ideas on a daily basis, 2) it will keep me writing, and 3) I welcome the inherent catharsis of putting pen to paper, fingers to keys, pixels to screen.

As I was driving to a client site today, I began to think about some of the practical realities of blogging. Do I use my public persona or go incognito? In some sense, I’m intrinsically a private person, so most of my online writings tend to have an anonymous quality to them. In many ways, I’ve compartmentalized public and private. In other ways, not so much.

I suppose a more salient question would be, “does it make a difference?” And I don’t mean that in an apathetic manner. I’m referring to this whole “web of connectedness.” Someday, Google HAL (still in beta) will know every single thing about everyone based on the ethereal connections between websites, like some massively global game of sudoku. Post a comment about the OSU Buckeyes on your stamp-collecting friend’s MySpace page and instantly it’s linked with that metal detector you bought on eBay last year. Now Google knows that you’re that guy who made the Usenet posting back in 1992 about an old pine-tree penny you found in the Maumee River, happily reporting your find to the State Archeology Bureau. Yes, yes, data mining is our friend. Now go back to sleep.

Joking aside, I really believe that one day, our net trails will be scattered all over places like Google’s cache, the Internet Wayback Machine, and the insidious Carnivore (your file soon available as a FOIA request!) for future historians and curious genealogically-oriented progeny to see what we did in our spare time. Now that should give you pause next time you visit YouTube to watch Weird Al videos (the latest of which hits a little too close to home).

But all of this raises interesting questions about the social implications of context.

  • Am I going to say anything that I wouldn’t want traced back to me? Yep.
  • My online friends almost certainly see me differently than the people I know offline. The context of our internet experience puts us in interesting social boxes in which others will recognize us instantly, but we may be only dimly aware of this ourselves. It makes for an interesting disconnect between two realities… like seeing your priest in a speedo at the YMCA. Some people know the swimmer, some people know the holy man. When the two collide, someone goes blind.
  • Will my musings be fodder to exclude me from some important societal role in the future? Think jobs, public office, lovely young lassies, etc.
  • Am I revealing myself to potential stalkers/crazy people? (And yes, I have experienced it before. Do you know what it’s like to have to leave your instant messenger in invisible mode for two years?)

Am I really all that anonymous on the internet? Not really. Google will point to my many photography books, small-scale railroading books, my recent work as a grad student at the University of Arizona, and my past work as a pastor of a church. Oh wait. Those are my nom de doppelgangers. (And with just that bit of information, Google HAL will one day be able to spit out my real name.)

I’m evaluating two different builds of WordPress (standard and MU). Once I’ve settled on one, here’s what you should expect in the next few weeks: A new design for my blog (actually, I should say, a design for my blog). RSS. Tags. Photos. Cool stuff.

What you won’t see: my very most favoritest song playing all midi-style, volume 10 the moment you arrive here. Pictures of Pomeranians. Animated images.

The real challenge? Keeping it interesting. But more importantly, if I write, will they come? I don’t really think so, but that’s not the point. It’s a private journal, left daily on a bus stop bench for passers-by to peruse if they care to.

The Be Good Tanyas

// November 20th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

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From: Peter Barney (pbarney@norden1.com)
To: The Be Good Tanyas
Subject: BGT’s newest fan
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 03:27:01 -0400

To the Be Good Tanyas,

You must hear this a thousand times a day, but *I* need to say it: wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

I discovered your music maybe 14 hours ago, and it has enchanted me completely. Somewhere deep in the wells of my thought, yours is the music that I had hoped for for most of my life, but didn’t quite realize that I did so. And now, when I listen, it feels that I’m visiting some distant familiar dream where music flows like rivers, and the jarring world slips away into a forgotten fog. I’m bathing in music that takes me to a place where I’ve never been, but feels so familiar that it seems I’ve been here forever, lying on a hammock under a blue sky amid knee-high golden grass.

And before I go, I must tell you this… any band that you admire and reckon to be greater than you, I’ve probably heard. But no other band that you might adore has done to me what you have done, and I thank you for it. If I should ever have children, you can be sure that their children will know your music. Thank you, and please keep it coming!

Peter
in Columbus, Ohio

From: The Be Good Tanyas
To: Peter
Subject: Re: BGT’s newest fan
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 03:27:01 -0400

peter,
that is hands down the nicest letter we have ever received. thank you for your words and the love you send. it makes everything worthwhile to hear these things. you keep dreaming and loving. hopefully we’ll get to columbus one day.
xo
the bgts

My Journey Home

// May 17th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal

Wandering upon the far paths
and drifting by night,
down the great celestial trails,
seeking your skies

And then comes the raising of a new sun,
casting rays of light upon your fair skin;
casting shadow into all that was;
marking my passage upon your unexplored boundaries

Finding a new home upon a distant shore,
I had never known that it was you; it was you
that I’ve been seeking.

The new starlit sky shines down
and home calls
to you my sweet,
to your new shores
and my pilgrimage complete

A Sergeant’s Plea

// April 17th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal

Second entry to 100 Words:

A Sergeant’s Plea

“Even now, he waits for us!” His rage flew toward his lieutenant’s face. “We alone can stay his misery, and yet you would have us stand idle! He is naked and alone before the host of our enemies, and he believes that we will come for him. Can you not imagine such hope and horror?” His breath was short and violent.

The sergeant stepped back, surveying the faces in the room. “I ask you sirs, will we abandon him to this misery?”

The lieutenant looked to the floor. “We will do nothing. We will wait.”

Dedicated to Pfc. Keith Maupin

Effet de Neige

// February 22nd, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal

First entry for 100 Words:

A winter night, dark, deep, and lovely. Deer tracks interrupt a freshly fallen shroud of snow. In this wandering whiteness, there is only me.

And the thought of you.

I am seeking… seeking for something, but I do not know what. Something missing is concealed from me in my lonely forest. Snow is now falling in moonlight’s pale glow, settling on the ground in gentle kisses, covering my footsteps. Soon, they will be hidden, and I will not know the path from where I came. And still I search.

For you.

And here, in my ultimate desolation, I am abandoned.

Dawning of Destiny

// August 1st, 2003 // No Comments » // Personal

Have I *really* discovered my true calling? Have the thousand tendrils of miscellaneous trades and wanderings coalesced into a perfectly harmonious calling for me?

I am a writer. In some way, I’ve always been one. I haven’t always written, and I have to admit that much. But for well over a dozen years, I’ve occasionally put pen to paper to tell my stories. But this time, it was different. It all came together in some brilliant way, and here’s how I came to the realization…

Cleaning up my space is generally a futile exercise. It’s “Operation Shuffle Things Around”, and always ends up more like an archaeology dig than anything else. But this time, I found a slip of paper that I hadn’t read in some years… it had been stored away long ago, and the folded edges of the yellowing paper barely held together. On it was written a simple idea for a story. One of many that I’d jotted down years ago. But after a decade of life and experience and growth, my mind read something different between the lines of that synopsis. In an instant, I felt the pull to write once again, and I felt it deeply. I still don’t understand the actual mechanism, so I can hardly explain it here.

The ensuing three or four weeks have been spent (re)learning this craft, and writing like a madman. I’m amazed at my growth in just a few short weeks, because I’m seeing my two week-old writing as purely amateurish. Exposition, character development, and basic grammer (did you catch that attempt at wry comedy?) are improving, although I need a lot of work in idea development.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas. I have more than I can possibly get on paper. My mind flows forth with story ideas. The issue is planning my stories well. Once I get an idea, I immediately want to sit down and start hacking out text without considering where the story might go. (Just like me… never test the water with a toe; always jump right in and find out what it’s like.)  I need to learn to gently pull at the edges of a story idea, teasing out the finer details as it expands in my hands, allowing it to grow organically.

BTW: Nice follow-up to my last post which was made just four months ago.