Yesterday I burbled purple paisley prose all over the page and, in trying to answer the question “Why do I Blog?”, only managed to come up with a lame sort of “I don’t know.” but I also referenced Douglas Adams’ answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything which turned out to be 42. You see, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the Earth is nothing but an alien-designed supercomputer run by highly intelligent mice to find the actual question that goes with that ultimate answer. Unfortunately, after the planet Earth is destroyed by Vogons to make way for an interstellar bypass, the question is put on hold. That’s really what I did yesterday. I put the question on hold.
But today, feeling ill and a little blue, I decided to percolate the old teapot of wisdom one more time to see if I could find an answer in the tea leaves. I am not a well sort of individual. As I have posted before, I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor since 1983. Every day I wake up to a new dawn is a bit of a miracle. But the sand is running out of the hourglass. There are things I have to put right, and blogging is a way to do that.
In this photo Paffooney I am sharing one of my recent miracle sunrises. 6:55 looking East from the Greenbelt in the middle of Carrollton, Texas. The dog exercises me every morning in order to keep me alive on the off chance that I will drop some bacon on the floor one morning in the near future. She also uses me to bag up poop so she can stay out of trouble with the city.
Every morning is like that now. I am retired. That is a less-painful way of saying “waiting to drop dead”. I spend a good portion of my day now alone and able to write and think and not do very much else. So what I write and think has to be the real work that I am doing now to justify the amount of food I eat and air I breathe (and bacon I drop as the dog has just reminded me.) I have recently finished two novels. I have a novel waiting to be published, with a contract and everything at a small, but very real publisher. I have two books already in the marketplace, Catch a Falling Star and Aeroquest. You can find them and ignore them on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com just like everyone else has been doing. The books are what I am technically blogging about. I am blogging by command of I-Universe publishing. But that’s not really why I am doing it. There is so much more to it than that.
Here’s the realist’s assessment of my writing… it has become a very expensive and time-consuming hobby that eats up my remaining days like a ravenous wolf. At the rate I am going, I will not live to see the day when my writing finds wide-spread acceptance. I have the word of professional editors and other writers that my work is very well-written, and there was a time in my life when I might’ve made a decent living at it like Terry Brooks or R. A. Salvatore. There was a time when good books found a publisher. Now, there is the little problem of a world teeming with books all clamoring for notice of their own. I am generally ignored by the masses. The local library didn’t even put the gift copy of my book, paid for with my own money, on their shelves. They didn’t give it back, either. My time is not yet, and my audience is probably made up of people not born yet. Maybe they simply don’t exist.
But all those mulched-up and melancholy things I have said about my writing amount to nothing in the face of the question, “why are you still bothering to blog?” Truthfully, in the past few months I have made myself laugh and made myself cry by writing and telling stories… by mangling metaphors and propagating purple paisley prose… by blogging. And I really don’t care if no one ever reads my blog full of blather and allusive alliterations. They exist. They are real. And I have offered them to the world. Why do I blog? I still don’t have any idea.
These are the very first flowers that bloomed in our neighborhood this year that didn’t die a horrible death by freezing. Sure, they are only common dandelions and many think of them as weeds… but they are also proof that for now the sun continues to shine and possibilities continue to bloom.
Catch a Falling Star 