a blog’s state of the union

I wish I could tell you how many blog posts, over the years, that I’ve started and never finished. Not because I lost motivation, not because I got lazy, but because it became– for lack of a better term– not worth it. Or, not what I want to put out into cyberspace or on a page somewhere.

In today’s waterfalls of content, it’s hard not to feel like I’m just adding to this gushing white noise. You get enough of it already– between recipes and listicles and tutorials, you can learn it all with just a few bookmarks in your browser. This puts a writer in an interesting place.

But I guess my purpose has never been to teach you anything, really. It’s been to be here, and ask the questions that don’t yet have answers. To be here and to reflect this life, and maybe your life, and these joys, these inspirations, these dark places and the good ones, in the hope that I’m not alone and that you’re not alone.

Bear with me here, but in CS Lewis’s ever-after, there is sinking and there is standing firm. In the world we live in now, the qualities which are most real aren’t yet solid to us– grace, compassion, truth, loyalty, wisdom, relationships. We understand these concepts but they are ethereal, irresolute, not physical. Our hope is that these are the lasting things though, the most real, the most infinte.

But the things on this earth that are solid? Firm? Tactile? They fade into nothingness as these lives pass. And I don’t want to concern myself with these things, these sinking things, regardless of how solid they feel right now.

All that philosophical nonsense to say, I don’t think my writing will be the writing to teach you something, anything. But, if you want to engage the mysteries and complexities of this day-to-day living, trying to discern what is real and what is sinking, and what is loving and what is less, let’s keep talking.

Am I crazy for craving this? Maybe. But I’ll still be here, writing my crazy heart out.

[Also, if you want to have a conversation about Wendell Berry, or pie baking, or puppies, or Jason Isbell’s music, and how all of these things engage these mysteries and give us hope, I’d like to do that too.]