Every morning I'm surrounded by windows framing a sky. Minute by minute, a layer of blue is lifted until a starless, aqua color remains. Sometimes I'm conscious that time is passing. I can hear the day beginning for others; street noise growing as the sky lightens.
Other times, I don't see or hear anything—I'm buried in words.
I wish every day were the latter.
Man, if only I were brilliant: a fast writer with a quick wit and the power to command ideas to spill onto the page. But I'm slow. I edit as I go along—a sin for writers—and even when I love a topic, I find my progress comes with a halting pace, constantly stopping short in a search for more words.
Get me talking about a subject and I can go on and on if I really care about it. But this one-way conversation thing is difficult. There is no injection of opposing views, no alternate perspectives to ramble over, not even a nod of a head of "mmhmm" to remind me that I'm talking to others.
Writers often do best in solitary, in those early morning hours when no one is there to interrupt. But I wonder how they keep the ideas flowing. I wonder why other writers produce constant brilliance when it takes me hours to wrap up one post, or days to finish one article.
And, though the numbers are probably less, there are still many writers who have the ability to dive deep into a subject, while I feel a lot of what I write is just surface. Fluff. Internet filler.
Ugh.
This blog sat untouched for a number of months at a time. True, I was too busy for it, but in another aspect, I was also worried about what I was putting into the world. I was worried about being part of the crowd that produces unceasing clickbait content and publishing thoughts that didn't affect anyone's day.
Maybe that's just me, but I wanted—no: I want—to produce something deeper.
And now the windows are framing the sun, just rising over the mountain next to me. Logging trucks are downshifting, their engines straining noisily to keep up speed on the uphill. The neighbors are piling kids into their car for school. All this light, all this noise. This is my signal that it's time to put away reflections of living deeply and join in the noise of the day.
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Okay. I'm probably your biggest fan, probably always will be, so I'm biased. But, I've read countless comments, whether in email, blog, tweets, or even oral form that your words do touch the lives of others. Please don't forget that. You have always been detailed and thorough in your investigations of subjects, so if it takes more time, then it's worth it. We all need quality today. Quality in food, quality in lifestyle, quality in conversations. It's the buzz that's irritating, the nonsensical talking, the rambling... I can't handle. Silence is wonderful and even beautiful, especially in today's world. That's why I understand you relishing your treks into the mountains on paths not created, or slopes of snow pristine. Brains need that, emotions need that. Writers have hours, days, weeks of blank minds in the area which they are writing. I remember various teachers telling me that you should seriously consider writing for a profession, that your stories you wrote while in class were of an aptitude closely aligned with the spell-binding effect of Stephen King. So remember, when you are writing, they are not empty surface words, for they touch the reader and you bring out subject matters that we should be thinking deeper about, preferably on a porch chair.
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