I find myself confronted with a quandary. Fueled by my discontent over having not written a blog entry in close to (or is it over?) a month, I am presently situated in a coffee shop, laptop in lap, nearing complete caffeination and ready to rock out some verbiage for the selective masses (read: you and somebody named Chuck). So here I sit, typing away, but I type with eyes wide open, scanning the coffee shop patrons, ensuring that nobody can see what I am doing. Because heaven forbid someone actually sees me engaging in the sacred blogging process. It is at once a very public, but decidedly private affair. But I sort of digress. Quandary. You see, an easy solution to my scribbling woes would be to simply write in the privacy of my own home. But for reasons anything but known to me, I am patently incapable of producing original thought while in the confines of my living room. When I am home, my laptop transforms into a chronic email-checking, hulu-accessing, and an occasional conciliatory Google news quasi-perusing station. Blogging has no place in my increasingly hot, muggy and uncomfortable domicile.
I have succeeded in writing 189 words towards a bona-fide blog entry discussing the writing of a blog entry. Were I a paid columnist or a freelance writer for Anyamericannewspaper Tribune, I reckon such mindless banter (or is it the banter of banter?) would be discouraged. One must write about something, right?
Well, here’s a morsel of topicality for you all. Between the ages of 7 and 11, I was convinced that I would grow up to be a professional baseball player. I knew that I would be #17 for the Atlanta Braves, playing beside Otis Nixon and Greg Maddux (the greatest players ever to live…or so I was convinced). There was only a generous handful of problems with this aspiration: First of all, it was a baseless dream. I am probably one of the few products of an American male childhood that never played a day of Little League baseball in my life. Let me rephrase: I never played a day of Little League baseball in my life. And yet, as an 8-year old, I could give a flawless recitation of the entire Atlanta Braves’ depth chart. I knew who was on the disabled list and for how long. Potentially long self-loathing story short, I mistook a hobby (watching baseball) for a career aspiration (#17 Joel Turner, First Baseman for the Atlanta Braves).
At one specific point during these formative years when I was convinced that I’d be moving to Atlanta, not fully grasping the utter obliquity of such a prospect, I was completing a writing assignment for my 5th grade class. The details are rather fuzzy, but I do recall writing a story about a group of friends that camped out in a haunted house, defying threats made by the community that they’d be eaten alive by ghosts and ghouls. In the story, they were in fact terrorized by ghosts and ghouls and they didn’t get much sleep because they were fighting a guerrilla war with said otherworldly specters. At the end of the story, as the sun came up, they orchestrated a gallant rescue of one of their captured friends and managed to escape the haunted house. I remember this story only because my teacher, Mrs. Cox told my parents that I have a real “knack” for writing and it is something that I should continue to pursue.
So here I am, by no means where I want to be, but all the same cognizant of where and when I discovered what I wanted to become. I can’t say whether or not putting words to paper will be my definitive meal ticket; but it will always be my passion of choice. That and giving myself a hard time for ever being a fan of the Atlanta Braves.
do take my word for it. 