#21: Made it under the wire!

I want to do this now because it's still Saturday, and that means this counts. Even though I've been thinking about the weeks for this one-a-week year as beginning with Saturday and ending with Friday, still I am capable of the mental stretch necessary to include Saturday as part of the previous week. That means I'll make my deadline. I'll still be on track, on target, and will still have an opportunity to finish my task. One thing you must give yourself is opportunities to succeed: more of them than you give yourself chances to fail.

So I've been reading a book of blogs by John Scalzi, the author of several science fiction books and the Whatever blog, beloved by thousands and in existence since the beginning of the interwebz and the Blogosphere. Scalzi points out that "blogosphere" is a terrible word, but is still in use because nobody has thought of a better one (Or that might have been Wil Wheaton, who wrote the introduction to the collection. Can't remember, won't go look -- I'm trying to beat a deadline here, and at some point, either my brain will give out or I'll need to go eat dinner and spend time with my wife; while I can stretch my understanding of time enough to make this week count as last week, I can't wrap my mind around the thought of not spending time with my wife when I could be. I don't have that much elasticity. Damn, am I still inside the parentheses? What the hell was I talking about?), so we'll need to come up with something better -- but again, not now. The book has given me several kinds of inspiration, that's where I was going with this.

First, I can write shorter pieces and still have them be viable pieces, complete texts, finished thoughts. I need to think smaller thoughts, that's the main thing. And use fewer words.

Second, I should probably be moving towards having a daily blog, not a weekly, because people are creatures of daily habits, not weekly. So if I want people to visit regularly, and read and comment and participate regularly, then I need to be regular. QED. Ipso facto. Cogito ergo sum. I don't want to learn Latin, but it sure is fun sometimes. By the way, that "probably" is in there because I still need to focus on my novels, and the blogs will always be secondary to that. But I should be able to write short daily pieces while still getting good work done on my book.

Of course, having a daily blog means I will need more time to write. It means I will need to be more up-to-the-minute on news stories, rather than doing my usual thing -- catching the headlines, the first blurb about an issue, and then vanishing back into my books and video games and navel-gazing about my profession and never listening to anything more about the news story until it's all over and the commentary has begun. And then I wonder why I can't seem to remember big things that happen very well a few years later. I know all the Grand Theft Auto stories, though, yessirree. And all the Sims I've created.

So I was thinking: am I a worthless slug because I don't follow the news, because I read silly books and play silly games? Maybe, yeah. I'll have to think about it more. I can be pretty lazy with work, too, even if I cover it up with resentment and self-righteousness. Hmm.

I was thinking about keeping up with news stories; I turned on the CBS Evening News because my brain was tired of reading (I graded thirty or so essays today, on not enough sleep. Still kinda giddy about it. From it?) and quickly realized how many things I could write about, just based on a single newscast: the Joplin tornado, and how freaky tornadoes are, and how scared I am as it becomes more clear that we have already fucked up the climate, and are now going to start paying the price for our short-sighted consumption and our partisan divisiveness. The war, and soldiers dying. Gender issues, as a soldier's widow and mother of (I don't know how many, I was listening at that point but not watching) says that she needs to be the dad as well as the mom, now. And so on: that doesn't even count the commercials, or the meat I cut up for dinner tonight, or the videos that Toni called me in to watch, one about a litter of 17 puppies -- a huge number, and both lovely and freaky to look at, and then you remember: that's still two fewer than the Duggars -- and another about a lioness who picked up a nature photographer's tripod camera and carried it off. And it doesn't count what else happened to me today, like the essay grading or the trip to Wal-Mart, and my conversation with Toni about how very depressing our Wal-Mart is here -- most Wal-Marts are just discount stores, after all, but the St. Helens Wal-Mart reeks of despair, and is a never-ending cavalcade of broken people, which is most depressing when one realizes, as I did, first that one knows several of the people there, many of them former students of mine who are already abandoning their potential in order to search for a cheaper tub of Crisco, and second that one is there right among the damned. It doesn't include the lawn that needs mowing and everything I think about that (Such appalling vanity, to put so much effort into controlling a small patch of nature, our very own created world, as artificial as blue Astroturf [And that simile popped up because of a conversation yesterday{Thursday?} about my colleague's Homecoming photo taken on the Boise State football field, which has blue artificial turf she called Smurf Turf, in a formal dress that matched its hue perfectly, and I could write about a couple of things there.].), and it doesn't include the dozen things that Scalzi wrote about that I have my own opinions on.

Point? There are a ton of things I could write about. Largely because even if I don't take in large amounts of new information, I have spent a lot of years learning a lot of stuff, and I know a whole lot of background knowledge (That's another thing I could write about, because my book club/teacher training book talked about it a lot: reading gives you necessary background knowledge that makes sense of the world. Good topic.), and so it doesn't take a lot of new information to spark an opinion or an idea. Look at what I've written so far, mostly from the thought that I should write more blogs. I don't because I don't always want to take the time to write: that's a problem. I also don't because I don't believe I am a sufficient authority to write reasonably about many of these things. That's partly true, but partly a problem, because the way to do that is to look through my own lens, use my own knowledge and my experience and my opinions, and that's what people would want to read anyway, assuming that anyone would want to read what I write. I lack self-confidence, but there's no reason why I should. And there's another topic right there.

I also don't because there are several things I'd like to write about but shouldn't. The union negotiations, which are ongoing and sensitive, and shouldn't be the subject of a public blog. My students, who have the right to privacy even when I don't like them very much. My school, which already showed me they don't want me writing really nasty things about them -- and it's a reasonable point, even if I resent them for it.

I also don't because my brain is often tired and stuck in one track from work. One thing about Scalzi: he's a better columnist than me, partly because that's the experience he's had while I've been teaching Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day. He's also better read and educated than I am, or at least he comes off that way because he knows enough to write what he knows, where I want to write about everything. Ignorance or arrogance, that desire to do all things, to be all writers? Either way, it comes to the same thing: I need to write what I know. But to do that, I need to realize that I know more than I think I do. And I need to realize that writing is what I should be doing, almost before anything else. Even if I don't do it as well or sound as smart as John Scalzi. And I think I do, at least sometimes.

One other thing: I realized while reading this that I turn too much of my rage on myself. It's unfair, it's damaging, and it isn't good opinion-blog-writer's practice. I need to go the other way, and start blaming other people for things that piss me off.

So the upshot is, I'm planning on downsizing my responsibilities at work next year -- no union negotiating, no book clubs, no extra classes or duties of any kind, and hopefully fewer preps with better, more efficient planning and grading -- and that means I may have time to write daily. If I can, I will. I may go a half-step and just try to write every other day or something, as preparation for going full-bore daily the year after that, or some such. But at any rate: I need to write more, and so I will. Starting with this blog.

Which, while it is largely incoherent and rambling, still counts as being on time.