The Writing Gene: Why I Started This Blog

I don't know what it is. Perhaps I have the writing gene. This is not necessarily a good thing. Writing has been associated with some of the worst episodes of my life. This "gift" traumatized me so early that for most of my 20s and 30s I couldn't write at all.

You've my blessing to stop reading now. This is a pretty bad, rambling introduction. Maybe you should look at something further down the line; something I didn't write to kick this project off. Even better, just paddle on. This is only one scrawny bush in a whole rain forest.

I just have the compulsion. Where once I was blocked, now it's nearly logorrhea. I write to clear my head and the results aren't always pretty. I have traded horrible, crazy email with my (now) adult children.. I've also crafted beautiful things that I'm proud of even now, except I can't find most of them.

Brevity is not among my virtues. I am a tireless writer of e-mail. People send me five sentences. I reply with 10 paragraphs. They reply with three words. I've left people wondering "just who is this screwball?" More than often the writing has a life of its own. I can understand how biblical scribes might have felt they were channeling God's words. I can assure you I'm not. It's just one of my ways of avoiding getting down to what I ought to be doing. Just my way of re-arranging the deck chairs while I sink.

It is unconvincing to say religious textual fundamentalism is silly. But it is.

I have written quasi-professionally. That means I've been published, but the writing itself never earned me a nickel. I know what it's like to work with a good editor. A good editor makes it seem that you can actually write well. Obviously, I'm sans editor now.

Like any other writing, the more I polish, the brighter it shines. If you don't like a recent item today, come back tomorrow because I might have changed it. This works against anyone silly enough to subscribe. All they get are first drafts.

So this is just my way-basket, a place to squirrel away text nuts. Someone will sweep away the shells and rot after I'm dead. My grandchildren might be interested in these fragments. Or not.

I can never find that old pithy stuff when I want it. Where is that terrific pleading to save the country from Karl Rove and his ilk back in 2000? (or was it 2004?) How can you score "I told you so" without the evidence? Pointless game anyway, though fun in the short term. Being right yesterday doesn't set the odds very far in you favor next week.

So here in the big, spinning virtual round file, I'll warehouse my stuff until some ancient Cobol drudge notices I haven't updated in a long while. Then it's off to dead-archive land with a zillion other bloggings of dubious talents.

We die to make room for variation's adapters. Will the future just choke on all this ASCII, let the bits evaporate? What to do with ten thousand "Not Quite Shakespeare" sonnets? Or will mining the musings of ten billion fools teach processors to be crazy as humans? GIGO conquered? Mine to muse but not to know.