External Processing, the Grand Canyon, and Other Procedural Notes

It occurred to me that before I get too far with this, I might do well to lay down some expectations for myself and for any unfortunate denizen of the intertubes who should happen to stumble into this thing.  My readership has expanded exponentially in the past several days (up to double digit cumulative page views! oh boy!). Maybe it's time to get this out of the way; or maybe I just feel the need to plan and control something, and this happens to be the most available object. One way or another, I'm going to take a few paragraphs to speculate haphazardly regarding the future content and operation of this blog. Mmmm, tasty content.

My purpose here is twofold, though I anticipate several likely ancillary benefits. Purpose of the first part:  to amuse and entertain ya'll and myself with whatever little morsels I manage to scrape off my shoes at night. It should be fun or interesting or educating; if not for you, then at least for me.

That leads me to the purpose of the second part:  to gain perspective through the outward expression of my thoughts. Introversion was never a clean cut for me. Certainly it's there, but it's not the whole story. [I'm reminded of the time I took a Meyers-Briggs test at summer camp and somehow came up strongly extroverted. Going through each trait, they split the group into its constituent halves to explain the meaning of each term assigned. When the introvert-extrovert split came, I was one of maybe two or three people standing quietly on the extrovert side waiting for everyone there to chill out, while the introvert side just looked plaintively at the leaders. That was confusing.] At any rate, lately I've found myself with more to share than I have places to share it. Losing a wife will do that, as it turns out. The second purpose of this blog, then, is to be a site of external processing for my own benefit. It has all the comforts of home, but ends up being turned loose on the world.

That's what I'm trying to do here.  In the meantime, I expect that it will give me a chance to practice writing in a creative, non-academic, non-technical fashion. I think proficiency in different styles of writing is mutually reinforcing, and my career is likely to involve a lot of writing. Furthermore, writing about a topic forces me to think it through more closely than if I just read or spoke about it. On the other hand, it's also just plain nice to write something other than a contract once in a while. To the extent I do end up writing about serious matters, I may also add a few drops to the ocean of human knowledge, or at least spread it around a little bit. That's not my express goal, but in the unlikely event it happens, there will be no complaints. Finally, I think there is some community benefit to be had in the act of telling. Openness begets openness, thought begets thought, and friendships are made or strengthened in the process. That's good too.

I've given some thought to the question of what I will post. Consistent with my two goals here, I've made the very easy decision to post whatever the heck I feel like, and in whatever tone suits my fancy. I'll mix it up. I would expect economics, music, religion, politics, nature, art, things that float, and probably some dime-store legal analysis. I make no promises on content, except that I will not let it become a blawg. I know you were worried. It might get personal, either in passing or in substantial parts. This is, after all, a personal blog, not a commercial website. I am aware that this is a theoretically semi-public space; anything I put out there is fair game.

I also hope to maintain some standard of quality here. I promised myself to proofread. And to use pictures to keep things interesting. E.g., Figure 1, below (depicting my standard nonsense visual aid).

Fig. 1. The scrappy ones are my favourites.

You see, in high school I gave a "persuasive"-style speech on vegetarianism. More accurately, it was on why we should eat steak. I researched my topic over the course of several weeks, put together my notecards, rehearsed, and went to bed confident the night before (also, confidently. I have lots of experience with going to bed.). When I woke up, I remembered that part of the assignment was to bring a visual aid. I had completely forgotten about that requirement. Crap! What do you use to demonstrate vegetarianism anyway? I looked around my bedroom, and all I had that looked remotely presentable was a poster of the Grand Canyon that I got when I visited my family in Arizona the previous year. So I took it in, stuck it up on the white board, and snuck in little references to the Grand Canyon wherever I could. I survived, though I didn't get a good grade on that part of the class. Today, I again commit to giving you visual aids or other integrated media, but I will make no representations as to their relevance.

With that silly thing out of the way, let's get blogging!  As a wise blogger once said, comments are gravy!