Dear Diary

I should have been keeping a journal for the last 15 years. Apparently, anyone who is great in life keeps a journal.

I realized this yesterday morning at about 4:30 after I had been awake for nearly two hours. I was in the music room, if it can still be called that; it would probably be more appropriate to follow the example of a school at which I used to teach and call it the Multi-Purpose Room. It used to be a full-fledged music room, but when our baby was born it whelmed the office and library much like an amoeba eating paramecium so that we could have a nursery. Now, it’s the guest room, too, except that our guests are increasingly opting to shell out money for a hotel room.

I tossed the two down pillows that I had brought with me—just in case—on the futon and turned on the computer. There is something about the light of a monitor as sole light source that is still a little chimerical. The first time I experienced it, I was 16, and it seemed magical, futuristic, advanced, civilized. My brother and I had brought our meager resources together to build a Compaq 386 with a whopping 4 meg hard drive. We loaded it with a flight simulator for my brother and a driving simulator for me. It was kept in my room, and sometimes I would stir in the middle of the night and—instead of turning over—I’d fire up the computer. The cold, monochromatic, unidirectional light of the computer screen would wash my room in flickering gossamer. Like a television set, but somehow better. Once, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I was lit by monitor. Half of me floated out of oblivion; I could see part of my face, my ear, the white of my t-shirt and the front half of my arm. The rest of me had dissolved into obscurity. Very cool, I thought.

Now, turning on the computer in the middle of the night still seems a little otherworldly, but I have acclimated to it on some level. To a very mild degree, it is how I imagine astronauts must adapt. First, being in space literally must be otherworldly, but soon it becomes routine in a chronic way. Yet, no matter how accustomed the astronauts become to their new environment, they certainly must carry other unsorted feelings of abnormality—that this is simply not natural. That is at least how I feel, sitting in my music room, peering into this portal of the world, hunched over in a habitual position that would make my chiropractor cringe.

I should start a blog, I thought. It was only 2:45 in morning; I’d been up for fifteen minutes and this was the thought I was having. The idea of blogging has been pestering me for just over a month now. I figure this is the work of the same little muse that tried to get me journaling ten years ago. I resisted journaling back then for four reasons:
1. Starting a journal in my twenties seemed like starting a story in the middle.
2. Journaling is work and requires time.
3. Journaling is reflective, which seems dangerous to me. It might provoke unwanted changes.
4. People only read journals of famous people. Why write if no one is going to read it?

Before I could journal, I had to answer my own objections. I attempted to do so in the following ways:
1. I won’t start in the middle. I will first chronicle all of my major life events to date and then I’ll continue with the present.
2. I have no children or many obligations. So, I have time to journal.
3. I will avoid reflective journals. Instead, I will only tell stories.
4. I will probably be famous.

I did try journaling, but it fizzled out quickly. The main problem, I believe, was trying to chronicle all my life events to date. It was really boring.

And, ten years later, I’m still not famous, nor am I all that interested in fame.

But I am going to blog*. I’m starting in the middle with today. I do have children now and consequently no time. But, my wife is blogging, too, so we’re carving out blocks of time to write and read each other’s blogs. Also, I have become reflective anyway, and it has provoked changes—all of which I like.

Oddly enough, though, I did not blog in the wee hours of yesterday morning. I thought about it, but then decided it would be a waste of time. So, I edited digital video of my little 23-month-old. Editing digital video is one of those tasks that is at the same time tedious and rewarding. The idea of crafting a psuedo story with visual and audio elements is a lot of fun. The insipidness comes from the amount of video that I have to weed through. Sometimes I let the video camera run for twenty minutes with the hope of catching one or two great moments and the fear of losing something precious. And why not? 60-minute digital videotape is cheap and reusable. I can shoot a nearly infinite amount of video. Sometimes I edit out up to probably 80 percent of what I had captured, and still I find myself watching the videos and thinking that it should have been pared down further.

My dad began taking home movies with his Super 8 film movie camera when he was in his early teens. He would buy three-minute reels, take movies, edit the film, and splice together the film to make up to thirty-minute silent home movies, usually about one theme or another. He made a movie called “My Brothers and their Cars”, which was more interesting than it sounds. Other films were about watching people unawares, his siblings, or local parades. He even managed some special effects. With three minutes of film at a time, he had to shoot sparingly. I know, because when I was twelve, he let me use his old camera. By that time, three-minute reels were running almost $7 at the Ben Franklin. Hearing the rhythmic clicking of the camera’s shutter was simultaneously thrilling and depressing; shooting the movie was fun, but the finiteness of the film felt so precarious and valuable—something to be hoarded. I am so grateful to have the freedoms of digital video, but at the same time it seems like some of the value is gone. With an infinite amount of “film”, I am not discerning with how I use it. There is no effort involved, no reason for restraint or thought.

And I guess that’s part of my complaint with writing in a digital age. In the past, writing took effort and therefore thought. Writers had to contemplate each word before dipping the quill or setting a printing press. Even typewriters—which made writing faster and easier—still tempered the writing process in comparison to today’s tools. In fact, I am quite confident that if I had to use one of those antiquated tools, I would not have expended the energy to write this. It is so easy to forward meaningless e-mails to millions of people several times over, to publish on the Internet, to write, delete, revise, copy, and paste entire passages that words have become cheaper than ever. No one really has to think about what he writes because it costs nothing. It seems like most people have nothing to say, but they say it anyway.

So, this is my first blog. Really. I tentatively named this blog site Pencil Animus for lack of a better name, but also because I want this writing to have purpose. I do not want it mistaken for rants or ramblings or meanderings or digressions. It is first for me, and then for you if you care to read it.
* How many blogs are started in the middle of the night?