March 2020 "And you may find yourself..."
Chances are that some of you read that title and immediately began singing a song. To be specific, you were singing Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime.” Now you’re singing to yourself “Behind the wheel of a large automobile” or “There is water at the bottom of the ocean.” I love music, along with many other things, some of which will be covered in later blog entries. It isn’t just the notes but I am always dissecting lyrics, both trying to understand the artist’s meaning but also finding parallels between those words and experiences, emotions, and events in my own life. “Once in a Lifetime” is a perfect way to begin because it speaks to me about arriving at places in your life, looking around, and not having much of an idea how exactly you got there. Like launching a website. And starting a blog.
I am not a blogger. I am also not a writer. When assigned an 200 word essay for school, I was the kid that would write two sentences and go back to count words. Two more sentences and more counting. Rinse. Repeat. (This was back in the olden days when we had to write on paper and did not have a computer to tell us how many words were in a document. I know, horrible!) Writing is not particularly enjoyable to me. There are too many rules. Vary sentence structure. Don’t use regional dialect. We are also discouraged from using the word “suddenly” for some reason that still is not clear to me. Well buck up, y’all because I am a rule breaker and if you read this blog, you are going to find some egregious offenses to those writing rules.
Another bullet on my list (long) of “Why I should NOT have a blog” is that I often feel like I do not have a lot to say that is particularly deep, profound, or enlightening. I have been fortunate to meet many interesting people, travel to some pretty great places, have lots of hilarious stories, am curious about things, and I’ve got snark for miles so perhaps that is enough. It’s really going to have to be.
So that OTHER list, the “Why I SHOULD have a blog” list is quite short, yet here I am. I am attempting a blog because it is a good way to engage people with my website content. Also, according to some people (no, not just my mom), I am at least mildly entertaining so if nothing else, maybe I can entertain a few people for a few moments.
As far as blog content, no promises. I will make an attempt to write about things that brought you to my website, none of which I can claim to be an expert about. <- You see that, right there? Ending a sentence with a prepostion. Breaking more writing rules already and sorry, not sorry.
So that is it. That is what you will be getting. Maybe once a month. Maybe more. Maybe less. Sometimes I like to take those song lyrics that I love so much and alter them a bit to suit myself, like taking “It’s a strange situation, a wild occupation, living my life like a song” and making it “writing my blog like a song.” Lyrics credited to “The Wino and I Know” by Mr. Jimmy Buffett. Oh, and 573 words. How about that?