Well, why the heck not??

It’s a complicated dance, this idea of starting a … (oh geez, I hate to even say the word)… a blog.  I’ve been thinking about it  for some time now.    It’s taken me an awfully long time to summon the mojo to get down to it, I think, out of a sense of “been there, done that”.    You see, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …… long before it was common (or easy) for everybody and their plumber and their plumber’s cousin Ralph and Ralph’s aunt Susie to have a blog, I did.

Oh, the WORD hadn’t yet come into common usage, but that’s what it was.   I called it the House of Shouse.

It started out when I would sit down at the computer and just start writing whatever was on my mind.  Sometimes “stream of consciousness” sorts of things, sometimes more thoughtful articles on a wide variety of topics.  Some were intended to be humorous, some more serious.  Some were designed to help build community, or to prove a point that I considered important at the time, or to  tug at theheartstrings of the reader.   Some were just silly because every now and then, silliness is its own reward.   I would email these out to a growing personal list of folks.  It was my way of keeping in touch.  I would often get a fair number comments back from the recipients.    Many of these comments were positive, and often encouraged me to collect these pieces and  “write a book”.

Book?  Nah.    Oh, I’m not saying there’s not a book lurking inside me, looking for the right time to burst free.  I might even have a detailed plot, timeline,  character sketches and several chapters written. Or not.   As Stephen Wright says:  “I’m writing a book.  So far, I have the pages numbered.”

No, those email pieces back then weren’t a “book”.   But I did decide to collect them, mostly just so as not to lose track of them.   Then I started hand-coding many of them into what was, for the time, a pretty snazzy website.  (Hey, it was the mid-to-late-90’s, and our standards for “snazzy” were decidedly lower.)

No, Mr. Gore, I didn’t “invent the internet” when it came to blogs …. there were others before me that I took inspiration from.   You know… a “standing on the shoulders of giants” sort of thing.   OK, fessing up …. I flat out stole ideas about layout and presentation from some of them.    Karawynn Long, a writer of speculative fiction comes to mind as an early “blogger” that I liked a great deal, both for the quality of her writing, and for the cutting-edge nature of her website.  There were several others.

So even though in my mind, the word has come to stand for something that is often just a little too… precious….,  the truth is, yes I did “blog” back in the dark ages.  When “personal internet presence.” was something damned few folks had.

Then, for reasons arcane, technical, pharmaceutical, and ethereal I just quit.   I was still writing, to be sure, and even writing a great deal at times.  But doing the “web thing” was more trouble than it was worth.    A group of friends, old and new, even came up with a word they used whenever I’d send one of my lengthy missives on some topic or other.  “We’ve been Shoused”, they’d say.   And they had, too.   But the regular sending or posting of the “online journal” came to an end.

Occasionally I would get the bug to fire up the process again (and for me personally it’s always been MUCH more about “process” than “product”), using the tools available to the modern blogger.

Then I’d wise up.

Then a bigger more insistent bug would return.  I’d squash it.  And so on.

All I can say now is:

Here I Am.

Yes, I’m a different person now.   Fourteen or fifteen years will do that.     I hope I’ve grown and changed for the better in that time.    Shoot, I hope YOU’VE changed and grown for the better in that time too.   So while it may be true that you can’t step in the same river twice…. you can still get wet all over again.   And I’ve been told I’m all wet many times.

I don’t really have a good answer to the question,   ” Why now?”,  except that somehow it  just feels right.

So here we are … and I hope you enjoy what you find here.    Some of what you read will be new.  Actually, most of it will be new, I hope.   But as I uncover pieces that I’ve written in the past, particularly if I still like them or if I can re-work them a bit so that I like them all over again, those may appear here too.   I don’t mind telling you that sometimes I do re-work pieces that I write, over the course of years.

A songwriting friend once told me, “It’s not done ’til you love it”.    Good advice, I think.   A few of the pieces I’ll post are done.   Others, while readable, are works in progress.

For now, I’m not putting these posts in categories.  That may come in time.  I just want to wait a while and see what emerges.

My only promise is that I’ll attempt to keep it authentic, organic, and real.   And by doing so, I believe you’ll find something of value.   We are not here to see through each other.  We’re here to see each other through.

I write these pieces for me.  But honestly, I write them for you, too … In the hope that something I’m lucky enough or thoughtful enough or honest enough to get down in words will be meaningful to you.   My desire is that whatever you read here elevates the quality of your day.  And maybe touches your heart.  Or makes you want to reach out and reconnect with people you love.

I’m trying to hold myself to a standard of quality for what I post here.   A standard that makes sense to me, based in authenticity, honoring the present moment, and based in my flawed but evolving  understanding of what it means to live from a place of lovingkindness.

Some days I’ll get it right.  Some days I won’t.

Here’s my challenge to you.  If anything you read here doesn’t feel to you like it meets that standard, call me out on it.

Really.

I hope you’ll make this a regular stop on your rounds of browsing the interwebs.   Even if it means you risk occasionally getting “Shoused”.

There are worse things that could happen to you, you know.

love,
John