Lately, several people have mentioned to me that this blog has become more of a personal journal or diary than a blog; and I have agreed. I’ve responded that it used to be more of a repository of my fiction and philosophical ramblings than a recounting of my daily life. But it always has been a salmagundi of whatever happens to find its way into (or out of) my brain. This morning, I skimmed the first full month of this blog’s content—September 2012—and found an assortment of posts about weather, poetry, my love affair with early mornings, a screed about the “new Malthusian imperative,” reviews of previous days’ activities, a travelogue or two, comments on religion, and a conglomeration of other such stuff. I found no outright fiction writing in that month.
But the blog did morph into a repository of fiction a bit later, yet all the old stream-of-consciousness assortment remained. So, the truth is this. My blog always has been what I intended it to be: a place to store what’s on my mind, both factually and creatively. Some people who claim to know what a blog is “supposed” to be might dismiss my internet real estate as an impostor; an artificial pretender that’s missing the requisite theme or threads. And that’s fine. I do not care whether my blog meets their criteria for blogdom; it meets mine.
Back to my assertion that this blog is a repository of my fiction and philosophical ramblings; it definitely is that, too. When I pick “fiction” from the drop-down list under the “categories” selector on the right side of the page, a list of blog titles (along with a few introductory lines from posts) is presented. Among those titles are Telenovela, Farmers’ Rebellion, Shrapnel, Elbow, The New Realm, Convolutions, Visionarium, Meticulous Chaos, Vishnu Islam Apollo Poseidon Chaucer-Townsend, and many, many more. Every one of them are pieces of fiction; some finished, some simply vignettes. But all of them represent what was on my mind from the perspective of fiction-writing at the time.
I’ve often contemplated stitching my fiction together into a collection (as I’ve written many times before, but which I’ve still yet to do). The same is true of my essays. And my “generic” explorations of emotion (“generic” in that they do not directly address my personal emotions). And a few other such ideas for collections. When those ideas come to mind, though, I run into a roadblock in my mind: why do a compilation/collection of materials that already exist online? Though I always overcome the roadblock, mentally, I never seem to get over it from a practical point of view. For example, why bother? Who would consume those collections? And many more.
With respect to fiction, too, much of what I’ve written either are short pieces that have never made it into the blog or are much too long (e.g., several of the novels I’ve begun but never finished). Those facts remind me that too many writers fall into my category: wanna-be. A writer who never finishes his novels or never submits his short stories for publication is not an author; he is a wanna-be author who writes. Becoming an author requires discipline and commitment. I’ve never had sufficient burning desire to be published to get beyond that wanna-be stage. So I’ve settled for blogging; that requires neither the energy nor the dedication to get beyond low-risk, low-reward self-publishing. I suppose I want my ideas to be “out there” to share with whoever stumbles upon what I write. Yet I have not had adequate motivation to get beyond it. Somewhere along the line I’ve read quotes something like “I do not want to write; I want to have written.” I understand. In my case, “I do not want to publish; I want to have published.” More evidence of my slothfulness.
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I’ve purposefully refrained from making today’s post a rehash of yesterday’s activities. Despite the fact that yesterday was an interesting, rewarding day, I do not necessarily have to document it here. No matter how badly I might want to do exactly that.
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And, finally, today’s quotation that I will consider as I face the fact that I have neither attained Perfection nor will I ever:
He who wherever he goes is attached
to no person and to no place by ties of flesh;
who accepts good and evil alike,
neither welcoming the one
nor shrinking from the other—
take it that such a one has attained
Perfection.~ Bhagavad-Gita ~
Onward, now, to face the day. Breakfast at a local café, I’ve been told, has replaced the parking lot gathering. I will go this once, even though I am not a golfer.
