For many years, when I was blogging on a mostly daily basis at my old personal site, I titled it "Random Ramblings". This was before the word "blog" had even came into existence. Generally though, it contained the same type of stuff the format of the "blog" would become: Musings on events in my daily life, a sort of public journal, bits of commentary on this and that, sprinkled with links to other stuff on the web I found interesting, written in a sort of freeform style that would often bounce around among multile topics and tangents; I made no attempt to try to keep it to a single focus. It started for me as simply a way to record whatever thoughts happened to cross my mind, and if anybody else happened to want to read along and add comments, cool! (Well, at least when I had gotten around to coding up a user comments feature a few years into it; the backend behind the whole thing also made a fun coding project, so I could make everything work exactly the way I wanted.)
Now, I find myself entertaining the idea of getting back to that style of ongoing writing, though I'm not sure I have the will to do it every day anymore. Back when it was a regularly recurring practice, the writing would become my life's narrative. As I went about my days, always in the back of my mind would be thoughts about what I might later write about it, and how I would tell the story. Then, usually at the end of each day, shortly before bed, these narratives and ideals would go into the database to be read by whoever found their way to my website; most of my readers, at least those who came back repeatedly and commented, were friends I personally knew from school.
[Gets up, walks outside the shack, stretches for a moment to consider what goes next...]
Oh, and did I mention that Random Ramblings would also typically include, interspersed with everything else, occassional comments regarding where I was, what I was doing, and other things that might be taking place right at that moment while writing. In case it isn't yet obvious, these would typically be enclosed in braces.
[Stands up again, picks up camera phone to take a picture of a view from here for later inclusion when this post is uploaded.]
...and why not make it a selfie, given that this is another era, roughly two decades later than that under which my web writings began so long ago, before I even possessed any digital camera at all. Here's my tea, the computer at which I type, and the view outside through the door at the Shaman Shack...
[Puts on headphones, starts playing Nightish's Once album to help get that inspiration flowing some more again...]
Did I also mention that Random Ramblings were also often quite long and verbose, due the fact that I typically didn't edit out whatever crap happened to trickle out of my brain between the "interesting" or "relevant" material? This might be why my only long-term readers back then were old friends who already knew me, and even they probably got tired of all the gibberish which accompanies my creative process. But as the old saying goes, if this bores you, aynone is free to switch to another channel. Hah!
The thing about human attention, especially in this post-television, smartphone-addicted era.... It's incredibly fickle.
[A robin flies to the ground outside the shack, gathering twigs, momentarily diverting my attention.]
Probably the only reason I'm actually writing right now, instead of surfing the web or watching the litecoin price, is because for the moment, at this place, in the shack, there is no internet access. I could walk up the hill to the house if I really wanted to go online, but at the moment I'm remaining here because I feel more comfortable about occupying "my" space. (Don't get me started about that horridly tacky social network site which preceeded facebook; m*sp*ce was among the trends in user adoption that made utterly no sense to me. The UI was so bad; why the hell did so many people gravitate to that platform? But that's a rant that's well over a decade out of date.)
I was at the coffee shop all afternoon the other day, and while I did jot out that bit about my crypto-trading fun, I didn't actually get around to writing nearly as much as I might have liked, largely because I found it difficult not to keep checking not just crypto prices and analysis graphs, but also fb notifications, bs on twtter, scanning headlines, reading a bit of this or that article, getting distacted, and then.... Repeating it again.
This sort of behavior is by design.
Even without intentionally trying to hook people, the very nature of hypertext as a medium tends to fragment attention. For example, by including the link I just did, I may now have diverted the focus of some readers to the podcast therein, while others might continue to follow this text, but perhaps are wondering in the back of their minds if it might have been more worthwhile to check out that other referenced content than continuing to read this drivel. Or maybe some with multitasking minds have already started playing the audio at the same time they read or skim these words, even while glancing at various newsfeeds scrolling by in another window. This is the nature of the medium. Can our minds, as they are presently evolved, handle so much?
Perhaps so, but doing all that (without even consciously meaning to all the time), and finding inspiration enough to write anything more than a few stray sentences before my focus would become diverted to the point that I would return to my text window, only to ask myself, "Now, what was I going to write here again?"
It just wasn't working. I was also a bit out of practice.
Now though, when it's just me and a laptop, with no network connection though which my attention could be too easily diverted, I just keep writing. Pointless, silly words? Perhaps, but after time, the momentum builds, and thoughts that were just mildly thoughts inside can flower into.... something that can be sent out into the world, for others to muse over if they like, and perhaps become entranced by, for a while...
If the attention to focus for long periods on a single thought stream of pure written word to enter that trance where the reader enters the creation to the degree that they begins to share the writer's mental picture. But that kind of picture takes time and skill to paint, and sustained focus to appreciate.
So here is where I admit that lately, even books I believe myself to be very interested in have been unable to hold my attention for more than a chapter or two, if that. It isn't about the quality of the writing, or anything like that. It's my own brain's lack of will to stick with it long enough to even really get very deeply into the narrative, or the information being discussed. The trance is broken my my own mind's urge to skip on to the next thing, whatever that may be.
[Starts playing another album: Within Temptation's Hydra. Lost in the music for a while.]
Let us burn.
[Rolls a cigarette, lights up the tobacco, breathing, letting the smoke in.]
It's dangerous, so dangerous....
[It hits the brain, triggering a subtle shift in mental consciousness. So similar to that other plant whose essence I hold sacred to inhale, yet the spirit is different... More harsh perhaps, but ]
And we run.
[Shuffles around all the clutter in the backpack, looking again for that lighter I just put down. The cigarette has gone out.]
No it's not paradise.
[Finds the lighter on the floor. Relights the cig as loose tobacco falls out the end. Becomes irritated at a piece of metal sticking out of the wall behind me -- a brace to support a shelf that was long gone, just sticking out of the wall, poking my arm. Resistance is strong.]
gonna fly to the edge of the world...
[Forces it out, pulling the rusty, bent nails.]
Screaming out, the world's on fire, but I'm still running free... In the silver moonlight I can breathe...
[Notices that the time is now 2pm, time for the Outer Limits Radio show to begin. But too into this right now to stop, as it just keeps playing...]
Coveredy by roses... we all have a place and time, need to live every moment...
[At track 8, stops music, switches over to the radio...]
I guess I'd rather listen than write right now. So I'll call this entry done.
