When I started this blog three-and-a-half years ago, my goal was simple and not terribly ambitious. I wanted to contribute a new entry once a month, every month. It didn’t matter to me whether the entries were long or short; it didn’t even matter whether their quality was first-rate or simply mediocre. I thought the discipline involved with writing about something new every month was the main thing. Over time, if I kept to this schedule, the quality would even out, and I’d find myself participating in a certain process of discovery. That is, I’d figure out what mattered enough to me to write about, and I could leave behind and unattended all those things that didn’t matter at all.
For the first two years, I more or less stuck to this schedule and was more or less happy with the results. Not only was I discovering what really mattered, but, thanks to comments from you, Dear Reader, I felt engaged in conversation with someone who found these matters to be important too.
In the third year, the whole world seized up and started to perform a credible impression of that late, lamented madman, that wizard of the non sequitur, Professor Irwin Corey. In other words, the Covid-19 pandemic encircled the globe and upended every aspect of our daily routines.
In Canada … oh, never mind. Suffice to say that under pressure of the pandemic, my blog production fell off somewhat. Yet I persisted, and in the end wrote new entries for more months than not. The same for this year that’s now ending, right up to the month of September, when the wheels fell off completely.
Two things happened then, one negative, the other positive. My desktop computer, a 10-year-old iMac suddenly died. It’s always a drag when you have to buy a new computer, but the whole process was aggravated this time by what we’ve decided to call supply-chain problems. In the end, I had to wait 10 weeks to replace my dead computer.
At almost the same moment my computer expired, I met Whitney Smith, the prodigiously gifted writer and editor who, for many years, has published an online magazine called The Journal of Wild Culture. Whitney invited me to contribute an article or two to his magazine, so while waiting for the new computer, I worked on revising a couple of pieces that had already appeared here as blog entries. I’m delighted to report that one of them—“Thin Places”—will appear in The Journal of Wild Culture in the new year.
I want to thank you, Dear Reader, for bearing with me in the meantime, and to let you know that the tradition of the monthly blog post is about to resume. I also want to wish you the very best for the holiday season that’s already bearing down upon us and for the new year that’s about to dawn.
I’ll look forward to reading Thin Places next year. I really enjoyed reading about your aims when you started the blog and how the process evolved. We always think we know what others are thinking, but learning about these details shows that there is always discovery when someone decides to describe honestly what and why and how it went. Thank you for that honesty, Ed. And that last line “the very best for the holiday season that’s already bearing down on us and for the new year that’s about to dawn.” I wish I had thought of writing that! Wishing you courage and productivity and a better year than this one!