So, partly at the suggestion of my church pastor, and partly because I got a free electronic journal, I started keeping entries again. The first few months of this year were difficult for me and the journal helped me get through it. There is something wonderful about getting your thoughts on paper.
I started writing at age 8 and really got into it by age 12. My favorite writing style has always been satire, and because some teachers would take my writings literal, I sometimes got into trouble or was given a bad grade. But most teachers appreciated my satire and love for irony and cynicism. In Junior High School they had a wonderful program called Independent Studies where you could sign up to study a topic not normally covered in the curriculum. So, for two years I wrote like crazy during my Independent Studies periods. It was at this time that I started my novel, which I worked on for years but never finished. It was titled "Winter Days and Weary Nights," and, in short, was about a movement that started in northern Europe and Scandinavia to conquer the world for the sole purpose of making it better.
I did major writing during the last two summers of college, and then when I graduated I REALLY started writing for about four years. Here I was just married and broke, but I came up with the money to buy a used IBM Selectric typewriter. It was a lemon — it never worked correctly, but I kept on writing with it for several years.
By 1984 I begin getting interested in one of my other passions in life — computers. I learned BASIC programming, got involved in computer user groups, and my life took a different turn for the next decade.
Early on I realized it was too hard to make a living at writing, and there is little demand for rambling satire, so I became a newspaper reporter instead. Over the years, I worked my way up from a reporter to an editor and today I'm a communications manager.
Five months ago I began this Blog. I write mainly as a way to record my thoughts, and to have an immediate off-site safe back-up. Of course, when I croak, my on-line subscription will eventually expire, the service will be shut down, and all my innermost thoughts will be erased forever. As for me, my will states that I am to be cremated, with my ashes scattered in a prayer garden. There will not be a trace of me, and there is something beautiful and glorious about that. In a way, it is vain to reach out for immortality. I am just here today, trying my best to be a good father, a good husband, a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a good human being. But, while this MAY sound cocky, I also have a deep yearning to leave the world a little better than the way I found it.
For us writers, there is something eloquent and beautiful about
the absolute vanity of life. It is better to be ashes than to be
an obstacle for a lawnmower.
While I write this blog mainly for myself, I do write it for others as well. I have received a few positive comments on it over the months. After seven years of trying, I now doubt that I can save the world. But maybe I can plant a few seeds. If someone reads my blog and it encourages them or inspires them to improve the world in some way, then I have accomplished my mission.
My journey through life has been so painful because I look at my fellow humans, and I see so much good. Yet, I look around the world and see so much bad. We humans are capable of doing FAR BETTER than we are doing. God has entrusted us with an incredible brain and a Planet with vast resources, yet we are squandering and screwing it all up. It seems that our successes only create new problems, our ancient way of thinking keeps us mentally caged, and we continue to screw things up royally. Maybe we are learning from our messes, but if we are it is a slow process.
My statement on life
I will not ramble further. However, I would like to share an entry from my old journal from earlier this year. It is the thesis of my blog and website:
I, Yellow Canary, have existed on this planet for 43 years. While I see great good and beauty in my fellow humans, I also see bad, in the form of ignorance, indifference, and apathy. When I look into our future 50 years from now, I do not see good. What I do see is a badly crowded, badly stressed, and badly polluted, Planet that is full of violence and hate. We have already seen plenty of violence and hate in the first few years of the new millennium, and the 2000s are just beginning.
Terrorists suck from the tits of Mideastern oil wells, and rather than finding alternatives to the madness, we continue to buy SUVs and Hummers so that we may feed our enemies. And all the while the religious doomsayers bow down and condone the corporate savagery that keeps the imported oil flowing.
Blessed are those who resist this madness.
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