And Round and Round I go....

I have to step up and admit that I've lately become a bit of a slacker when it comes to the written word. In the first two years of keeping this blog, I think I missed posting on about six different days. That was in keeping with a structured goal I had in mind... I wanted to write 365 days straight. That was the sum total of my aims and ambitions with Serendipity. When I hit that standard, I felt like I had the momentum to keep it going, and I did so. It became a routine part of my daily life. There was something about the habit that grounded me to a certain way of living- call it the "examined life", if that's not too pretentious. It was a running commentary on my very existence.

Now I have accumulated something in the neighborhood of 930 posts. I'm pushing forward to a 'magical' four digit number as if it meant some kind of extraordinary achievement. But ultimately it's a completely arbitrary number. Let me just say that I have written a lot. If I had paper copies of all my entries, the sheer bulk of it would likely seem wondrous to me. And yet it's not so easy to figure out if the totality is in any way greater than the sum of the parts. It's never been particularly clear what value it all holds for either me or whatever readers have made a point of slogging through it. It has loomed over my life in some continually accruing mass. Perhaps it's become unwieldy.

If it sounds like I am mulling over the prospect of the end of Serendipity, then I guess my phrasing is doing its proper job. Nothing goes on forever. Before I even started this online stuff, I kept a written journal. Within it I kept a record of all the people I spent time with, and listed the activities that made up my day. I imagine that 90% of it would be interminably boring for a stranger to read. To be honest with you, I haven't reread much of it at all. Still I kept up that practice for years. Eventually I got to wondering about its purpose. It felt a bit like pissing in the wind. At the same time, its physical reality presented an artifact that could be picked up and read by anyone without the scruples to leave it alone.

I guess I started feeling like I wanted an audience. After I began the blog, I kept up with the journal-writing for awhile. But eventually the demands of both seemed overwhelming, and I stopped keeping a personalized account of my life. It was sad to let that go, but I was excited about the demands that writing for a public, anonymous audience entailed. I even had intentions of using this platform to publicize my artistic pursuits. Obviously the project morphed into something altogether different. Part of that had to do with the feeling that I had to protect myself by writing under a pseudonym. There are limits to this forum that sometime seem constraining.

I wanted to make every effort to avoid the kind of self-referential, introspective crap that you are reading right now. On the other hand, this is what I want to comment on. Part of me feels like I am increasingly at risk of repeating myself. The daily involvement with this blog has been an important part of the process for me. It has lent a structure and discipline to my writing that I wouldn't have acquired otherwise. Still, perhaps the process has outlived its utility. I'm really not sure yet. So why do I see a need to to incorporate these concerns into a post? One day (it could be soon, or years from now) Serendipity might just stop without warning. I hope when it does, it is with appropriate intention.