Dead Blogs

I just read that blogs are dead, a tongue-in-cheek statement on a running blog. I smiled until I saw the post was from February 2020 and nothing on the blog since. Either blogs really are dead or that writer, heaven forbid, was struck down by the pandemic. I didn't stick around to investigate.

Certainly, this blog has seemed dead. I wrote this on paper and was too chicken to check when I last posted. Weeks? Months? I've lost the rhythm and this post is no promise that things have changed for the better.

I'm looking for blogs because the news is killing me. I won't bore you with the details, but it's mostly the Republicans, damn all of them all to hell. I want to improve my physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual health. The news ain't helping, but since I often turn to the web for distraction, I want blogs that lift me up a little. Blogs though are dead. Everyone moved to social media. Ugh.

On a good blog, it's just a writer and whatever their mind turns to. There's not much of an audience and almost never any money. The possibility of an audience makes a good writer careful and thoughtful. The absence of profit sets the writer free.

Years ago, I was wisely advised to blog about one thing and build a brand. I didn't do it, mostly because I'm obstinate but also because I found other ways to make money and, especially in writing, I like to do as I please.

It's the do-as-they-please bloggers that I want to read.

Austin Kleon — phenomenal blogger — suggest we should write the books we want to read. I want a blog that lifts me up. Nothing hopelessly, endlessly upbeat. Just something that nourishes my mind and soul a little.

Am I writing that blog? I don't know. I'd worry more about it, but I just read that blogs are dead, so I don't think I'll get too fussed.

The Problems With Poetry

The problems with poetry begins with a book of it that might be good but you're not sure. You've read it once. You're reading it again. Lying in bed. Winter only a few stanzas away in the night. You're too tired to read the next poem with all the wondering whether the book is good or not. So you open Mark Strand's Man and Camel, a thing of certain and exquisite beauty. So good it solves all problems. You read six poems. Each a gently impossible wave brought to shore by invisible forces, celestial bodies on elliptical paths. Too much wonder. You need to share these poems with someone who would understand enough to simply sigh and smile at finding the divine on these pages, inside these brief poems, between man and camel. But you don't know anyone who reads poetry. Not that way. And even if you did, they'd prefer some other book. Not that Mark Strand stuff, they'd say. You'd tell them how wrong they are, but the camel has spit all over you and the man has climbed up to ride away. A real poet's exit. The kind of poet you see in your sleep, his book of poetry open on your chest rising up and down, as though pulled by some celestial and poetic force, the other book lying next to you filled with questions a mere mortal such as you hopes someday to answer though the poetic part of you knows you never will. Those are the problems with poetry.

Time & Story Changes

"Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?"

Daylight Saving Time: the clock on the wall is out of sync with the clock inside me, and I don't like it.

Rather than go on about my dislike of clock changes, I'm thinking about the stories I tell myself. Clock time is, after all, just a shared story on which we agree. It gets us to parties and tells us when to leave.

Yesterday, we had one story about time. Today, we're been handed another. Overnight, there was a break that upset me, knocked me off balance. I was used to the old story and still cling to it. I have that habit.

Three years ago, my story had me playing the character of a terribly depressed teacher. The plot grew darker each day. The theme was of a character stuck, unqualified for any other work. It was a tragedy, that story was.

I thought the story was written for me, that I was a character following along, powerless, perhaps helpless. Stories become more powerful as they go on and I felt too far in to even consider breaking with that story.

Story breaks, even small ones, can be tough stuff. It takes me days to adjust to the time change. Climbing free of the main story of my life, well that seemed downright impossible.

Until it wasn't.

The change in time happened suddenly last night, like the flip of a switch. Two years ago, on a weekend morning in January, words suddenly formed in my mind and I wrote them on a page:

"I will quit my teaching job in June."

A new story began. Just like that.

I had considered quitting many, many, many times; dreamed of, wished for, and even planned it; but the old story rolled over any ideas I had for writing a new one. Two years ago, through some mechanism or good fortune I still don't understand, one simple sentence broke two decades of story in which I had been stuck. Poof, like magic. A new story was begun.

After that, came the slow work of writing the new story. I told my wife. I told my daughters, brother, mother, friends, and colleagues. I began creating a character who no longer believed in being stuck at that terrible school though he didn't yet know what else to become.

Mostly, I accepted the responsibility of writing my own story. That sounds great, but it is also a burden. There are times when it's easier to play along in a story being written for me. But all those stories turn out to be tragic.

I still have stories to break down and rewrite, stories I tell myself about love and family, work and opportunity, health and growth, and on and on. Just noticing that I'm the writer of those stories helps remind me that I can move them and myself in new directions.

The clocks have changed. It's 9:41, not 8:41. I didn't get to decide that one, buy my story continues to roll out onto the page in blue ink from the pen held in my hand and as for the story of what time it is, Chicago was right to wonder why anybody cares.

The Low Bar (again)

It's possible I've written about this before, but originality isn't a bar I need to clear. I've lowered the bar to writing something on my mind that feels important.

I'm trying to be a little healthier. I want to be a lot healthier, like thirty-five pounds lighter and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I keep failing at that.

So the hell with lofty goals.

My "get a little healthier" to-do list this week is:

• Run/Gym 3 times
• Weigh In 3 times
• Walk To Work once There are two checks next to Run/Gym, three at Weigh In, and today I checked Walk To Work. It was just too beautiful this morning not to walk.

If I run or to the gym today, tomorrow, or Sunday, I'll have reached my goals. No big celebration will follow, just a quiet attaboy. These are only low-bar goals.

That's the point.

Change is tough for me. All sorts of things get in the way. Clearing low bars is good. Not great, just good.

And that's good enough.