You Just Have To Be Smarter Than A Pumpkin...

A few random thoughts.

First, a cyber-poke-in-the-shins to myself. I have a gazillion topics that I want to tackle in this blog; many of them are quite large and it will be a struggle for me not to use that as an excuse to keep working on drafts and writing and revising or just daydreaming about them and never getting anything "done." One of the points of starting a blog, for me, was to develop some discipline and whack-out a handful of thousand words each week, spread over a few posts. In addition to gaining that discipline, I hope it will help me develop a writing style and, after things start to flow more freely, I'll be able to do more word-smyth-y things with it. But I've been slacking, and it's almost 2 weeks since my last post. Bad, bad, me.

So, the way to keep writing when you either don't have anything of particular import to say, or the things that are important are SO important that you don't just want to brain-dump them onto a blog without "doing them up right", is to just blather on about this or that -- pick a not-particularly-important topic, but one that's topical for you, and write on it. That's why there are so many rant blogs -- "the thing that's really pissing me off today is..." type things.

So here's my minor rant for the day:

It seems that I'm not quite smart enough to go grocery shopping in These Modern Times. Oh, I gave it a fair shot, and I've always thought of myself as a pretty sharp guy but, armed with a detailed list from my wife, I found this morning's trip to the local Safeway frought with peril.

First, I spent about 6 minutes totally mind-boggled, because I didn't realize I was looking at "organic" milk, and I couldn't figure out just when-in-hell milk went to $7 a gallon! I was aghast -- is Exxon making this stuff, now?! Ok, so after I pulled my jaw off the floor, I found the regular-priced milk (still 50% higher than I remember the government-fixed price, but I figure there may be complicated economic factors involved, so ... "ok, whatever.")

Milk: check.

I noticed that my list also contained sour cream, butter & cheese. Now, I don't want to pull any of this "back when I was your age, everything was better" things, but it used to be that milk, butter, sour cream & cheese were all within arm's reach of each other (a) because they all benefit from refrigeration and (b) because they're all the same thing! Of course, back in the day, eggs were nearby, too because, well, milk & eggs somehow were both "home-farm" products that you could maybe imagine the neighbor handing out on weekends (if you live far enough from city-center), and somehow it just made sense.

Well, it turns out that in a modern grocery store (as I presumed this one to be from the track-lighting, and movie-production grade props to make things appear what they were not), cheese is on the "snacks" isle. Ok, you know, I can almost see that -- I mean, cheese is good snack food! Especially if you have things like cheese-sticks/string-cheese. But, oddly enough, the "snacks" isle also contained sour cream, bricks of cheddar and, I guess because they all go in a cooler-unit, jell-o pudding cups. <shrug> Ok, all snack-food, I suppose. But then where are the cheetos? Ah! Cheetos, if I would've given it any thought at all, are obviously beer food! Duh. Ok, I can go along with that one. And once you put Cheetos near the beer, chips of all sorts go there, too, as well as the fig newtons and related products. Ok, I was getting back into the swing of things, here...

But I still had this nagging memory that, back when cheese was with the milk [, butter, etc.], luncheon meat was nearby. I figured that this was because it was easier to install one wall-length cooler unit, and also folks have milk with lunch, too, so it sort of adds up. Then, once you had bologna, salami, sliced roast beeft, etc., the next logical thing was the rest of the meats. Tied together by the web of "goes in a cooler" and "is meat", these things just flowed logically.

I guess that's Old School thinking. The New Way has about 80 different kinds of bologna (how many of you would misspell that word, if it weren't for that cute kid and his Oscar-Mayer song?) and all the other lunch meats (but no sliced cheese!, that's on the "snack" food aisle), then bread -- which kinda makes sense, for making sandwiches, except it blocks your view of the rest of the meats, so you can't stand at the milk-door, look down the row and see meat, then also see things like bacon, steaks and pot roasts; those are hidden by the bread-display.

Oh! And I guess they have to dedicate so much shelf space to every conceivable brand of everything that the aisles are no longer big enough for 2 carts to pass in a straight line. Now, you have to pass about 2/3 of the way then, when the back of my cart is almost up to the back of your cart, we both have to turn slightly to the left (toward the other driver), to pivot the whole affair so that our cart-handles pass each other on a diagonal -- because they don't fit side-by-side! Actually, as assinine as that is, I sort of like the brain-teaser aspect of it...

Anyway, the other reason aisle width is important is because you can't back away from the milk-door far enough to see around the bread display to notice that there's more meat. So you stand there saying "I realize this is Santa Cruz and all, but we can't have abolished steak, for crying out loud...?!", but then you're not really sure. I mean, organic milk is going for $7 a gallon...

By the way, good news: egg nog is out. In gallons. It's cheaper than organic milk, too! Probably better for you. It is if you add enough rum, anyway...

Ok, I finally find the packaged shrimp & sausages, now I need a couple of cans of diced tomatoes. No problem! I remembered seeing "Canned Fruits" aisle-sign a bit back, canned vegetables are probably same aisle or one aisle over, right?

Well, sort-of. Actually, I looked at the canned fruits aisle, and saw no mention on the sign of canned vegetables, so I checked the aisles to either side -- no luck. Then I figured "well, maybe they're being smarty-pants, because tomatoes are a fruit, right?" (even though I'd expect it to be more near canned corn & beans than peaches & pears; but whatever.) So I go check, and the little mid-aisle signs don't have a canned fruits -- but they do have a canned vegetables! <sigh> "Ok, whatever..." So I walk to the far end of the aisle to discover... canned corn & beans. Well, hmmm... (a) where's the canned peaches & pears?! And (b) how about my tomatoes?

Turns out, as any small child could tell you, that tomatoes are "pasta" (small sign), which is "International and Ethnic Foods" (big sign.) You know, given the fact that the shelf-space dedicated to different sizes of chopped, diced, stewed, sauced, pasted and otherwise processed tomatoes is bigger than that dedicated to pastas (although it's close!), you'd think that "canned tomato products" would get its own sign. Nope. Oh well...

Ok, so it's Oct 29, the weekend before Halloween, and we haven't carved a pumpkin, yet. I'm to get two for my wife, and whatever I want to carve. But then I'm thinking... I've been in this store for about 25 minutes, so far, and haven't seen a single pumpkin! And I walked through the produce section twice! (Once on the way to milk, once because I thought maybe canned tomatoes would be near ketchup, which is in condiments which, as everbody knows, is in the produce aisle! (It's probably just the stores I grew up with, but that last bit actually makes sense to me, too. I guess olives & pickles are like produce, sort-of, and mustard & mayo just sort of go near there, too.)

So I go back to produce, thinking that maybe I just didn't see the 8000 pumpkins that were decoratively placed all around the bins of apple, oranges, potatoes, pineapples, etc., because they were so tastefully subdued.

Nope, that wasn't it. Pumpkins, it turns out, are not produce. Ok, Ted, let's think about this... Maybe they're seasonal -- that makes sense, sort-of. I say "sort-of" because coolers & lawn chairs are "seasonal", and get the "on top of the freezers" space when they're "in." Christmas ornaments and Pumpkins are (or should be, in my opinion), scattered throughout the store and, while for sale, make a sort of seaonal decoration for everything else.

Doesn't matter -- pumpkins aren't in the seasonal section, either. Good thing, because I didn't want to try to jiggle a few down from on top of the freezer units! Ok, I'm not that way, so I ask a helpful Safeway employee. "In front of the store", he says, "do you want me to show you?"

Uh, no thanks -- I think I can find the front of the store without much help. And I even recognize that I'm now looking for one of those pallets with the big pumpkin-decor boxes on top full of pumpkins out near where the carts are. Except I came in through the front, and didn't see any such pallets/boxes. Hmmm...

Turns out the pumpkins are in and amongst the carts. So, there's the middle of the store, where nobody parks, with some pumpkins, then 3 huge rows of carts on either side which totally dwarf (and block the view of) the pumpkins, then the doors to the store, in the spot furthest from the pumpkins. Oh, and a sign saying how it's illegal to shoplift. I can't help but wonder how many of those pumpkins are paid for, and if I'm being a chump by bringing mine up to the cashier. That's ok, I can be a chump in that way, if that's what it means...

Anyway... I finally got all the groceries. Wine didn't move (across from liquor, one aisle from beer, easily found by the end-caps of Doritos & related products), nor did roasted chickens (deli) or whatever else was on my list. But those first few items made it seem like this was going to be a serious ordeal!

While I'm gripping about grocery stores, I hate that they make the cashiers read my receipt and tell me to have a good day addressing me by name! (a) While my name isn't that difficult, hardly anyone pronounces it correctly, (b) the make-believe that the cashier is my "corner-grocer/friend" is inappropriate and cheeky and (c) (this is the real killer) to pointedly view my financial documents to pull personal information off of them and then use that information for your own purposes is invasive and rude in the extreme. For anyone whose mother didn't tell them this when they were kids, the proper way to address a stranger -- and this is true in all cases, but especially if you're in the service sector addressing a customer or potential customer -- is "sir" or "madam", as in "thank you, and have a nice day, sir." It's enough to make me want to try to remember to get cash when I go to the grocery store, just so I don't have to watch someone dumpster-dive my name off of my receipt and then use it to get fresh with me.

Day-em! that really pisses me off.

...But, other than that, it's been a pretty good day. The weather is great (70s), the dogs are happy, wife is napping peacefully, and we're going out to a nice dinner, later. (Groceries were for during the week meals.) Plus, I was able to outsmart the pumpkins.

I hope your day is at least that good.

And remember: you just have to be smarter than a pumpkin!

TNWM

I have a friend, Mikey and, every week -- with very few exceptions -- since about mid-1989, he and I have been going to dinner to talk about, well, pretty much whatever it is that we end up talking about.

When I first got a Job at Apple Computer, Mikey had just presented our co-manager with his idea of a "buddy checklist." Pretty straightforward stuff, the buddy checklist -- when a new person joins the group, they're assigned a "checklist buddy" who shows that new person where the bathrooms are, where the copy-machine is, helps them figure out who to talk to to get passwords for the various servers, how to set up a mail account (back then, you set up your own), where the good places to go for lunch are (this was before the cool new campus & cafeteria), etc. Now-a-days, nearly every company of any size has all of this happen as part of an HR indoc, or some similar thing, but Mikey's particular genius is that he saw this need back in '89 and devised a rather complete list of all the stuff that is typically missed in your average first-day "welcome to <Company Name>" schpiel but which is really necessary to function in your new job, and so Carol, our boss, assigned him to try out the new program on me. "How did you two meet?" people ask, and I always say "Mikey was assigned to me as my 'checklist buddy.'"

I think the first dinners were on Monday nights, but something came up that interrupted them, so we switched to Wednesdays. Back then, we were both single and so a lot of our Wed-night dinner talks centered around the trials & tribulations of dating (note to self: do a blog on dating strategy), and how we could enjoy that process more. One thing led to another, and it's been Tuesday nights for the last many-many years, and we've come to refer to it as "Tuesday Night With Mikey" or "TNWM", for short.

[Heh. So, tonight (Tuesday), Mikey's bailing because he wants to attend a town-meeting that's on a matter that's reasonably near & dear to him. Normally, I'd give him flak about it -- especially for missing on the day that I'm posting about how cool TNWM is -- but attending a town-meeting is a very TNWM kind of thing. In fact, we've spent many a Tuesday night doing something civic-minded, like going over the ballot-measures, or attending small claims court or similar. So... I hope you convince 'em, Mikey!]

Ignoring the fact that Mikey's a pretty smart guy, I just think it's cool that we've managed to maintain our friendship and keep in touch on a regular basis for over a decade and a half through several changes of jobs, apartments, houses, girlfriends (we're both married, now), and other normally-drift-apart-causing items here in fast-paced Silicon Valley.

To some people, this might not be much of a big deal -- my wife, Vicki, has lived on the peninsula her entire life (save a couple of years in VA and college in La Jolla), and still has lunch with people with whom she went to kindergarden. I, on the other hand, grew up in a military (Navy) family, and got used to the idea of moving, going to an entirely new school and making a whole new set of friends every 1.5-2 years until I was 10, when we stayed in the same place for 4 years, when we moved to Wisconsin, which I disliked a great deal, and couldn't wait to leave. I don't even remember where I went to kindergarden! (I'm pretty sure it was in Monterrey, though, although I'd have to check to be sure.)

And, to be fair, I have a few friends from the Wisconsin days with whom I still am in touch on a nearly-annual basis -- we've had some of them stay at our place for West-coast vacations, and we always try to visit when I'm back there to see my daughter (a Sr. at UWM, and I occasionally hear from some of the people I went to high-school with (including my 1st WI girlfriend, who's now in L.A. and occasionally comes to a bonfire or similar party-visit with her husband) and write (not often enough :\) a friend from the Navy days -- but, by and large, when someone "goes somewhere else" (leaves work, if that's where I know them from, or moves, or whatever), we tend to drift apart. So I think it's way-cool that Mikey and I decided "we're going to make the effort to not drift apart", and stuck to it.

Good on us!

Seriously, though -- there are, in my opinion, not enough truly top-notch people in the world and, if you happen to know one, it's to your advantage to nurture the friendship make make darned good and sure that, if one of you gets another job, or moves to another city/state or otherwise becomes less accessable, that you make the effort to not lose that person from your life. And it is effort! It's not much, but it's "more than zero", and it's well worth it.

(Heh, when I started writing about TNWM, I didn't think I'd get off on this tangent, but it is important! Such is blogging, eh?)

So, again, maybe lots of people already know all about this, because they've been doing it their whole life but, for those of us who have an early history of pulling-up stakes and starting over, that's my advice: when you run into a rare individual that would be a shame to drift away from, make the effort not to drift away.

Ok, I think I've beat that one to death...

So: TNWM. Over the years, Mikey and I have had a lot of conversations about a lot of interesting things -- neither of us are much "into" sports (except as observers of the fans) or weather, but we both do enjoy talking about philosophy, the economy, psychology, computers (of course!), constitutional law and who knows what else; we we always have plenty to talk about. Also, over the years, we've invited other friends or couples to join us and they always have a great time (of course, they're hand-picked because they're the kind of person who would really "get into" this sort of thing), and then they sort of become regulars and then, as the extra-friends mount up, TNWM started to be this big weekly dinner with a dozen or more interesting, talkative people and we started to notice: hey! We never get to argue about this or that just between the two of us, anymore. Tuesday nights had started to take on a life of their own, and we no longer get to spend all day Monday & Tuesday (or sometimes the whole week leading up) stewing over some topic and then work it out on Tuesday night, because someone else wants to steer things toward whatever they've been thinking about.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that..."

...But, as much as we enjoyed the group dynamic, we also wanted to reclaim the one-on-one conversation, too. So we decided that the first Tuesday of every month should be TNWE -- Tuesday Night With Everybody -- a sort of open-ended, free for all, "if you're cool & interesting & fun to be with and like this sort of thing, please join us" kind of affair, and the other Tuesdays are back to just me & Mikey. Actually, Vicki usually joins us, but that still keeps the "quiet, deep discussion" feel going, without things going 10 directions at once, the way the bigger group does.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, a couple of reasons. First, because it's way-cool, and you should consider setting up something similar with one of the smart people in your life. One of the things that came out of the dating-days discussions was that Mikey noticed that nearly everyone will say "I just love the woods, and camping, and etc..." but, if you ask them "how many times have you been camping in the last 12 months?", they'll answer zero. Ok, then, "when was the last time you went camping?" -- uh... "not since I was a little kid, with Scouts" is a common response. Ok, there's nothing wrong with not going camping but, if you love it so much, why don't you do it?!

I told you that because it ties in: a lot of people that I know say they just love to get together and talk/bullshit/brainstorm/argue/discuss/whatever with other smart people but, when asked how many times they've done that, this year (architecture meetings at work, while close, don't, technically, count), the answer is often "never." Ok, then, when was the last time you did something like that? "Oh," comes the response, "I can't even remember the last time. Five, maybe ten years...?"

So I'm telling you all of this to urge you to go out there and do it! (If you don't like yapping with people so much, but love camping, then do that -- I like camping, but I like yapping more. The point is: if you really love it, then make time to do it!)

And if you can't figure out when you're going to squeeze all this stuff you really love to do into your busy schedule, I've just given you a model for how to make it work. Once a week too much for you? Well, what do you REALLY have to do that's so gosh-darned important that you can't blow it off to do the thing you really enjoy?! But maybe you have some weird set of comittments, ok -- you can still set aside the first Thursday of every month (or whatever) to spend time with the coolest people you know, can't you?!

I don't know your schedule -- I'm just saying: figure it out! It's really not that hard.

The other reason I'm telling you all of this is because, over the coming weeks, months & years, I'm likely to open several topics with some variation on "so, I was talking to Mikey last Tuesday about <blah>, and...", and now you'll have a context for why I do that.

Are You A Packrat, Too?

I'm a bit of a packrat. Actually, I come from a long line of packrats -- my mom was a packrat, and her parents were packrats and her grandfather (my great-grandfather) was SUCH a packrat that he had to have a huge old victorian house just to store all the stuff that he had squirrelled away and I'm pretty sure that the whole reason they had my grandfather in the first place was so that he would grow up to buy a house and then great grandpa'd have some auxilliary storage space.

Of course, how was he to know that grandpa would grow up to be the kind of person who doesn't have a single square foot of available storage at his house, either...?

Anyway, about a dozen years or so ago, I started bemoaning what a hassle it was to be a packrat, and started getting all sorts of helpful adivce from my friends about how to break the pattern, like: put stuff you never use in boxes and date them. Then, when you move, if you haven't looked inside that box for a year or more, put it in the old apartment's dumpster instead of moving it to your new apartment.

<Shrug> Ok, that seems fairly simple. Except I bought a house before I got around to doing that (have I mentioned my procrastination, lately?), and haven't moved, since (plus, we don't own a dumpster, although we do make occasional dump runs), so now I've got a whole 2nd house (ok, it's really "the barn"; but it was the original house on this lot!) full of boxes of stuff that I've not looked at or used for 10 years, but somehow can't bring myself to throw away.

Actually, I'm getting a little better -- more on that in a minute -- but it's painful and slow-going and the slow-going-ness of it makes it more painful and... <whine, whine, whine!>

Scott Adams (The Dilbert Guy) wrote a funny blog entry a while back (actually, he writes a lot of either funny or thought-provoking or both blog entries) called Inconvenient Garbage, in which he talks about inadvertantly contributing to the problem. In addition to being kind of funny, in a "hey, I'm one of the people who are stupid in the way that Scott is mocking <chortle, snort>" way, it was sort of insightful, and actually may be putting me on the path to curing my packrattiness.

Maybe.

It seems that there's this category of stuff that has a vague notion of "sentimental value", but no actual value and, in fact, carries a sort of cost -- or negative value -- in terms of the fact that it's clutter and sort-of junking-up my life in a way that I find vaguely annoying.

My wife -- quite a bright woman -- suggests "well, what would be the bad thing that you imagine might happen if we just take <whatever> to the dump?" Good question! The problem, of course, is that I have no idea. I'm certain that if I knew the answer to that question, I'd be able to look at it, and say "that's dumb!", and then just toss whatever it is. It's like, "but then I won't have <whatever it is>, and at some future point I might want it."

Or something. As I said, I don't actually know the answer -- at least not fully.

But now, at least, I have an interesting way to look at the problem and think about it. And, as I said, I am getting better! I used to have two whole footlockers full of old computer stuff. And by "old computer stuff", I mean things like a binder full of green-bar 14" source-code printouts for the 1st computer game I used to love playing (*-wars on the Qantel), an entire shoebox full of punch cards for the 1st big program I ever wrote and a few old 8k RAM cards for a computer I no longer own (back then, 8k was a LOT of RAM, and cost more than a 1G DIMM does, today!)

(Note for the numerically challenged: 8k = ~8,000; 1G = ~1,000,000,000.)

Actually, I had a good excuse for the punch cards: I occasionally teach intro programming or computer courses, and it's fun to do a little history and break the ice with "back in the day..."-type war-stories. And I had plans to re-invent *-wars on modern technology.

But then, in a blinding flash "let go, Luke...!"-esque moment, I realized that (a) I could tell the war-story with about 3 punch cards to show as example, relieving the need for the other 8,000 of them and (b) that there was not one single line of code in that source binder that was going to be the slightest bit useful in my re-implementation of *-wars (which, btw, in it's latest evolutionary redesign-as-pipe-dream, is nothing even remotely resembling the original game, anyway, so keeping the binder around for code-as-design-notes wasn't even a valid excuse, anymore.) (Have I mentioned my procrastination, lately?)

Where was I? Oh yeah -- so I pitched that huge sorce binder (actually, I think I put it, a few pages at a time, into a bonfire, out of some weird thought that, technically, I was probably still under NDA for it, in some old lawyer's mind), and 98% of the hollerinth cards, two 9-track mag-tapes, all-but-one of the S-100 bus circuit cards and a bunch of other useless junk, and now the whole two footlockers' worth of stuff is squished into that shoebox.

To be honest, I don't know when the next time I'll have occasion to tell "back in the day..." stories with visual aids will be -- so the shoebox could probably be tossed, too -- but I regained nearly a cubic-yard of storage space, so feel better about that, anyway.

The funny thing is: my sense of aesthetics says that those open, austere, no-nick-nacks rooms are the prettiest, yet I don't think I've ever owned one, except in the moments immediately before moving in. I'm trying to exit the "well, the solution is to get a 12,000 sq.ft. house, and keep 11,000 sq.ft. of it full of junk, with one big, open, sparsely furnished living room to admire" mindset and approach the "you know, a good 75% of this stuff is junk, and could easily go to the dump (or Goodwill/Salvation Army/your charitable group, here.)

Actually, in a funny combination of both procrastination and packratiness, I've convinced myself that there's a fortune to be had selling a large fraction of my junk to other people on eBay. Somebody ask me how that's going a year from now; maybe if I haven't sold anything, it'll convince me to take it to the dumpster.

But what really amazes me about all of this is what an amazingly uphill climb that is! Normally, I'm the kind of guy who just says "ok, I need to do <blah>", and then I devise a plan, and start doing it, and pretty soon, I'm done. But with this "get over your need to hang on to old junk" thing, it's a real stumper -- I just don't get what my internal resistance to it is...

Some days, I think I should just go on vacation, and leave someone I trust with instructions "rent a dump truck, and take one heaping load of stuff that you're certain is junk that I'll never use and haul it away." Then, when I get back, I can gasp and scream and maybe cry a little about how "my favorite goldfish bowl -- I was going to fill it with loose change and take Vicki some place nice..." (or whatever) was gone but then, a few days later, I'd feel happier about how the sheer weight of junk in my life had been lessened by one dump-truck's worth and maybe -- just maybe -- it would be easier for me to do the next load.

Maybe.


But I'm sort-a chicken to try. I mean, what if my trusted friend tosses my old goldfish bowl?!?!

And that's the really weird part that I don't get. I know my blog is new, and nobody's reading it (if, for no other reason, than because in my 1st post, I said it wasn't for you to read, yet, anyway!) -- but I can sort of imagine readers falling into two camps:

Camp 1: "Just get over it, dude! Toss that junk, you'll never use it -- it's GARBAGE!"
Camp 2: "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean; I have exactly the same problem."

Ok, and maybe...

Camp 3: "What's the big deal? Those are treasures and you should save them!"

Still, if anyone's reading -- and especially if you're from Camp 2 and you have some bright ideas (it's always easier to coach others than to do, one's self!) -- I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Me First, Then You

This blog entry isn't for you; it's for me. I'll explain that in a bit.

I'm what the folks over at NaNoWriMo call a "one day novelist." It sounds kind-a fancy – like maybe someone who can whip out a novel in a day – but it's really their shorthand to characterize all the people who frequently have the thought "one day, I think it'd be cool to write a novel." So, last year, after several of my friends participated in NaNoWriMo's "write a novel" challenge, I thought "that sounds kind of fun; I should do that, next year", and I went over to their site and entered an email address to be reminded when this year's 50,000-word challenge came around. Both before that time and since, I've taken a few dabbles at "my novel", and written a few scenes.

Yesterday, I got the reminder mail. I went to their site, started poking around, and started getting excited about the idea of getting going.

Then I started thinking about what was involved. 50,000 words in a month is ~2000 words a day, with the occasional day-off (I know, you're supposed to write EVERY day – but there are very few things that I do that I don't occasionally skip a day, and I know myself too well to think I wouldn't take a break) and maybe a few days where you don't quite hit 2000. So then I went to look at a few example entries in blogs that I enjoy, to get a sense of how much 2000 words was and saw that they were in the 2000-word range, and THAT didn't seem so terribly hard, so then I opened up my novel, on which I've been dabbling for over a year, and did a word-count.

I'm embarrassed to publish the actual number, but let's just say that the realization of how small my little pride & joy was left me feeling a bit disappointed. Ok, fine: it was just over sixteen-hundred words. In just over a year.

Ouch.

Ok, fine – so I'm a bit of a procrastinator; I knew that about myself. Plus, I'm a tad nit-picky, and that makes me procrastinate more, as I haven't yet internalized the Nano-concept of "write ANYTHING, even if it's junk. Worry about quality later; for now, you need to just work-out your writing muscle." Then I got to thinking about these other cool blogs, and decided maybe I could do that as a sort of "pre-warm-up" exercise. I've always thought about blogging anyway so, while the 10s of 1000s of other Nano-writers are slaving away staying up until all hours of the night trying to bash out 50k-words in 30 days, I'm going to try to kick-off a blog and stick to it.

I actually DO have some kind-of neat ideas, I think, so it may actually turn into something worthwhile.

But that's not THIS post. THIS post is for me. It's my "statement of intent." If I just tell myself "I should start a blog", I'll never get around to it. But, somehow, having posted a billboard where everyone can see it (and the fact that nobody probably read it doesn't actually matter so much as that the post is published), then I'll actually "have to" make time & do it. That's THIS post.

Initially, my goal is to just bang-out 300-1000 words one to three times per week on whatever suits my fancy. In these initial posts, my main goals will be (a) to write regularly (b) to "find my voice" (including pick a format, develop a style, etc.) (c) diddle around with various blogging software, which will probably be used as an excuse to procrastinate on the actual writing and (d) write about my procrastination enough times that it becomes a matter of pride for me to actually DO goals a-c. Later, after a-d settle-in, I hope to be able to explore various relevant topics in greater detail, probably something in the ~2500 words 2-3x/week range. We'll see how that goes, after this first part.

So, if you're interested in watching me document my struggles with laziness and yet-another-net-idiot's stream-of-consciousness blog, feel free to read these first few entries. But they're not for you, they're for me. When I decide to post my first "real" entry, I'll label it something like "Grand Opening!", or some such. From that point on, the posts will be "for you", in the sense that I hope to be sharing some useful insight that helps others see some relevant issue in some new way that makes Everything Better For Everybody.

"...Or something like that."

Hey, almost 800 words in about 15 minutes, just talking about how hard it is to bang out words – piece o' cake!