If one were to talk about singularities, one could do worse than note the sudden influx of family into my life. Not only were parental units in evidence recently, but a certain uncle has posted comments on the previous blog entry AND apparently an aunt from other enviorns has more or less mysteriously left a note on my truck indicating that she would like to engage in some face to face. All of these things taken together make me wonder whether there is a nefarious undercurrent, a driving force of known but heretofore undisclosed origin. That is to say, I hope that no one has read and disiminated the information on this blog under the guise of misinterpretation. I’m not particularly unwell, I’m simply working through some chronic demons.

It were insinuated that perhaps I care enough about writing to do something with same (in terms of career, etc.). Without even offering further demonstration, I can point to the fact that I didn’t post on this blog (and thus did nearly no writing whatsoever) for almost nine months. Writing, for me, is usually a means to an end, not an end in itself. How can one take something they like to do and ruin it by doing it all the time. Witness the KC Strip steak: I dream about a rare strip fortnightly, but should I eat one five days a week, it would become just another meal. I’ve discovered this to be the case with just about everything in life; Why destroy that which you love? Its not even tragic, its just silly.

My writing, especially this blog, is a necessarily narcissistic activity. I write here because I like to read what I write. I am my own biggest fan, as it were. I’m not writing to myself, but the writing itself is a window into the soul. Its really a matter of perspective: I can think about this crap all day, but the mind being fickle, allows for those thoughts to disipate into the proverbial ether. Writing them down I can peruse them at leasure, even read them repeatedly to burn them into my consciousness like so much branding iron.

I should also explain how writing professionally works, so no one thinks that I’m copping out by not engaging in that time-honored profession (less honored as perennially persecuted). Suppose there is a continuum of writing ability that numbers such ability as 1 - 100, with 100 being the sort of sublime writing that lasts for ages and evokes passions in every generation that chooses to engage it (like Shakespeare or some of William Gibson’s work). On the continuum, then, 1 would represent writing by someone was exactly one step above the functionally illiterate. Speaking of Bell Curves and averages, we could say that the average person writes at about a 50 on this scale. Now, to break into the writing game, as it were, someone needs to be writing at about a 90 to write anything important and/or interesting (less if one wants to be a text machine that pumps out things like… well, anything in a newspaper basically).

Perspective plays a big role in why people would say “you have a way with words.” From wherever you are on the continuum, anyone more than about a step removed in the positive direction might seem like they, indeed, have a way with words. However, that doesn’t mean that person is good enough to do use that way with words professionally. That’s sort of how I am: not good enough, and certainly not getting any better at a rate that would put me in the professional catergory before, say, the sun goes supernova.

I’m just trying to put things in perspective. This is also why I lend less credence to the lay (i.e. non-professional writer) opinion about my writing than people perhaps think I ought. Its not an insult, I rather think its pragmatic. I admit that this might be a failing on my part, but whatever.

I will say this: no one in my life who was ever in a position to cultivate or propegate talent has ever felt that I had enough of same to be worth such attention. I’ve either had bad role models and teachers (which might be the case if I had less than say about 200 in my life… the sample size is fairly large), or I simply don’t have the particular talent at anything worthy of dissimination and or continuance. Encouragement has always been in the “Yes, dear, that’s nice” catergory and not the “I wept” catergory. Sounds rather hollow. If meant to encourage, I’ve certainly not felt so moved.

Off now.

-vec