I’ve been absent (absent! I hope I don't need a note from my parents to be excused) although I've been checking in now and then to read and comment…certainly not nearly as much as I’d like to, though. 

And posting? Forget about it…my last one is from when? August? Crap.

Sure...it's a "new year" and all that, but I'm not making any resolutions about writing more or anything. You write when you write and sometimes you just feel like rambling on and on, just like I'm doing right now.

There is also the lack of time but that's too easy an excuse. It's gotta be the top go-to excuse. And while not a crock for some, it really is for me (time is a consideration for everyone; I’m not special. Besides, people far busier than me find time to write. I’m just not committed to it enough (or good enough) (hey, a sub-parenthetical clause. And here’s another one! See? What a mess) to be serious or taken seriously in the serious writers' community). Sure, I could have written last night but nooooo; I was too busy…uh, watching a few episodes of Californication Season 4 on DVD. That show, ironically enough (although not too ironic, because for me to identify with the show’s protagonist would be like Gomer Pyle identifying with...well, Leonard “Private Pyle” Lawrence from Full Metal Jacket*), focuses on a writer named Hank Moody who can’t write, or at least doesn’t, much of the time…but for decidedly much more nihilistic and self-destructive reasons than I have (the parenthetical clauses are really getting to be a pain in the ass, aren’t they?).

For me (this is all about me, after all – see chart below) (hah! Another one!), at least some of the problem is also that I struggle with what this is supposed to be…I mean “this”…the page at which you (all three of you) are staring. Is it a blog? Is it a place for essays? Future book chapters? Short stories? I know it’s user-dependent; it can be anything you want it to be, which is pretty neat. I think I’ve used this space in a couple of different ways. Though I'd have to say this way, the way I’m writing right now...to you, the reader, conversational style - blogging I guess - is the style in which I write most of the time here. I think. And when you blog...what do you tend to write about?

There are, I see from my reading here, many types of blog-topics. There are far too many sub-sets of topics to list here, especially since I’ve neither the inclination nor interest in doing that. But the common denominator is that we, the readers, are given the blogger’s take on the topic at hand, more often than not their own personal story or connection with the topic, so in a way they are all stories in the blogger’s own imaginary newspaper editorial page filled with letters all having to do with some aspect of his or her personal journey through life. My own very unscientific poll of OS blogs and their generalized blogging topics (from the blogger's perspective) is illustrated in the only slightly amateurish-looking pie chart below:

 

There are a few writers that do not typically fall into the above categories; however there are so few posts like that the slice for them in the pie depicting my unofficial, unscientific and likely untruthful poll is much too narrow to warrant being assigned a color. Kent Pitman comes to mind. Kent’s excellent articles on the environment are thoughtful, extremely well researched and written and almost completely devoid of me-stuff (him-stuff?).

And please understand that pointing out the me-stuff is not a criticism; quite frankly it's hardly even an observation. A little like pointing to the sky and saying, "Holy shit, the sky is blue!", or, in this case, the pie chart. Most of it, anyway. I am certainly not going to bad mouth all the “me”. How could I? If I was to press a few more buttons and chart by pie my own blog entries (and you know I had to), it would look like this:

I’m good with all this me-stuff, by the way. I love to read about other people’s lives. I think we all do or we wouldn’t be here. Though there is the obvious car-wreck fascination aspect that appeals to some (ok, all), there are also the personal relationships that develop; friendships, loves (oh, yes indeed) and even alliances. Animosity…true; lots of that as well although OS seems to be in a period of peace, or at least détente, that has lasted now for some time.

In the end I guess it comes down to writing what you know. About what subjects do any of us know better than the stories that make up our own lives?

Which brings us back to poor Hank Moody…for whom it seems writing about himself is rife with turmoil and deceit. Part of the plot arc for the series has him writing a supposedly great semi-autobiographical novel after a long dry spell. But before he can turn the manuscript in to his publisher, the sole copy (Hank likes to write on a typewriter) is stolen by a woman who figures prominently in the story Hank has lived and written. She, a wanna-be writer and a manipulative one at that, changes a few things then has it published as her own work, much to the chagrin and detriment of Hank and those close to him.

The novel is then optioned to be made into a movie. In a particularly humiliating ironic twist, guess who is asked to write the screenplay? Yes, it’s our hero, Hank; though at least he is well versed in the nuance of the story.

Thus I close on another blog-chapter of navel gazing. See you all here again in another 6 months or so! I am busy, after all. The washing machine leaked and made a mess the other day and my car needs to go in for service and my daughter asked me to paint something for her and, and.....

* I was thinking about this as I edited this piece (not well enough, I know)...that it's quite a juxtaposition, by the way. Those actors, I mean: Jim Nabors and Vincent D'Onofrio. Remember how on tv and in movies Nabors talked like, well, like Gomer Pyle but yet had that amazing baritone singing voice? I recall seeing ads on daytime TV when I was a kid that were selling albums (your choice of LP, 8-track or cassette!) of Jim Nabors singing standards and trying to wrap my head around the fact that this was Gomer. Conversely, it makes me wonder of Vincent D'Onofrio in real life is more like Barney Fife than his character Detective Goren on "Law and Order, Criminal Intent".

*****