Regularity

I had to laugh last night when I read a message from my cousin, Bowen, in which he observed I hadn't made an entry here since back in early November. He said he hoped it wasn't related to any 62-year-old-type problems. I replied that unless you considered my failure to post anything since my birthday a "regularity" issue, the answer was no.

I don't know whether you read many blogs or not, but one thing I've noticed is that the ones I enjoy the most DO tend to post very regularly. And ones that don't post regularly are often disappointing because I've surfed to their site to see what they have to say, only to find that their last entry is a month or more old. So I understand Bo's message to me. What amused me about it was the fact that my NOT posting to this blog provoked a response whereas my posting often does not.

I suppose that if what I posted was more controversial I'd be getting more dialog about it, but I don't write this blog to get on my soap box about who to vote for, how the country should be run, or how other people should live their lives. As my little summary of its original purpose states, I wanted a place to talk about "things personal, interpersonal and online oriented." Enough other people fill the "need" for megaphone-sites for their shouting matches at the opposition, whether it be from the right or the left, and I'm glad to leave those battles to them. I don't enjoy what nowadays passes for "dialog," so I avoid it. It seems to me most of it is talking and not a lot of it is listening.

One thing I have started doing since coming back from my visit with Paul in late September is to adopt a technique I saw him use while I was there. Since he is a professional writer, his processes interest me. I noticed that he keeps a text file to which he regularly adds things that he might use in his articles. It's fairly easy to copy text from online articles or to note ideas he has to that file. Then when he is ready to write his article, he can refer to those notes to jog his memory or to use quotes that he has captured for his articles. The practice he has of writing an article every Monday, Wednesday and Friday hasn't yet made it into my repertoire unfortunately, but I hold out hope that I'll become more regularly productive eventually.

So Bowen, you can consider this entry to be the direct result of your message "inviting" me to get back to the task at hand. It's always good to have someone encouraging you to write. And I consider myself fortunate to have people who care about what I do in this blog.
- posted by Perry @ 6:03 AM