JANUARY 14, 2020 – This is my 250th blog post. At 500 words per post, the cumulative total equals 125,000 words. My brother-in-law’s memoir—yet to be published—comes in at around 150,000. Fifty more blog posts and my total collection will attain equivalency with his memoir . . . in quantity, anyway.
As I hiked back from “Little Switzerland” yesterday evening, snow swirling around my head, I wondered how much of a foreign language I could’ve learned with the time and effort it took to write 250 blog posts. Or how much of the Bach Ciaconne I could’ve mastered—strike that; learned well enough to perform without embarrassing my self—or how many classic films I could’ve watched or how many works of classic literature I could’ve consumed. Or more to improve the world, how much time and effort I could’ve volunteered. Or more likely, how much time I would’ve wasted watching cable news, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, or snoozing on the sofa.
I must acknowledge the days when I’ve had to stretch for a topic; other days when I I’ve hurled thoughts onto the screen, only to have them run straight off topic and into a theme unrelated to the one I’d contemplated. For me these surprise turns are akin to sudden changes in a dream sequence—right in the midst of riding backwards on a horse plodding down a trail, I suddenly find myself entering a well-appointed office on the 50th floor and asking for a Mr. Wivelschuster, who turns out to be my (long deceased) grandfather hiding from malevolent beekeepers . . . I just never know!
But perhaps there is a perverse side to all this posting, this steady stream of consciousness. In an earlier era, people produced impressive volumes of writing, but relatively little of it was hoisted aloft on a flagpole at the center of town, fluttering like underwear in the breeze for all to see. Nowadays, flagpoles with flapping banners cover the earth. You might say we’re deep into the Age of Flapping in the Breeze.
Although less might be more, we still operate as if more is more, filling our verbal landfills with an unlimited quantity of trash talk. We’re drowning in opinion and “self-expression” or maybe more accurately stated, we’re obsessed with having people plugged into what we’re thinking, everywhere, all the time.
What do I do about it? . . . Exactly, I rev up the screen, light up the keyboard, hack away, and . . . post, for the world to see!
What will become of all our words that (don’t) matter? Will future generations look at our era, shake their heads, and whisper their condemnation of us? Or will they not see or hear us—because they no longer read?
Having raised the question about the value and validity of this blog site, my inner compulsion anticipates the 500th post—a total of 250,000 words. That stack of writing will tower over my brother-in-law’s memoir.
But he will still tower over me. After all, he got a 12-year head start.
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© 2020 Eric Nilsson
