Renewal?

Here we go again. 

Maybe.

I dunno. Either I am back to blogging or this is another false start. Time will tell.

I stopped blogging nine years ago. I got sick. By time I got better I could no longer walk. Stuck in a wheelchair, the weekly photography excursions that inspired and shaped my posts danced beyond reach. No new photographs to inspire, I stopped posting. In retrospect I suspect the photographs were a crutch. Posting photos steered me toward safe, non-controversial posts. I did not need to expose the dark that sometimes colors my daily writing.

Photography also helped me avoid posting concepts that might offend. A silly fear I fear. Too many people seem to delight in feeling offended. I doubt any writing by anyone can avoid offending everyone. When a younger me and naive I might have enjoyed shocking. No more. Too easy. No challenge, but my interpretations of life, the universe, and everything usually fail to align with popular worldview. I am not sure I ever saw things the way people pretend to see things and in my experience, people translate alternative perceptions as insults and threats. Not my intention. I do not write to offend people. I prefer not to offend people. I intend not to offend people. My circle of friends is far too small for me to afford offending friends. You see, this is why I needed the photographs. I became a bit of a coward.

To post and exercise honesty, I need to share the words as they land.

Every day I spend and enjoy writing for hours. Writing, I think, acts as my form of meditation and encourages steps toward mindfulness. Day in day out, writing stands as the one thing that does not make me feel like I should be doing something else, but I often regret not sharing. I fear scribbling my meandering stream of consciousness on paper gives me a writing buzz but I am only contemplating my navel.

I did say stream of consciousness earlier, right? Sidetracks and diversions are part and parcel.

If this is a new start for posting, I need to write what my pen insists on writing, try to avoid milquetoast and keep things honest. Being honest tho, does not mean I believe everything I write. Topics, insights, interpretations and conclusions of my writing sometimes fail reflect my opinions and beliefs. Often, I write to explore ideas, conduct little mind experiments to find out if what I think I think is actually what I think. I spend hours exploring what I actually believe vs. what I think I believe? Am I interpreting a situation with intellect or emotion? Do ideas that worked a decade ago still work? If not, what changed? The universe? The world? Zeitgeist?

A good friend once accused me of being too causal and fatally logical. At the time I wondered what the hell he was talking about. Decades later I think he saw something I could not. My universe exists through cause and effect. Much as I try, my imagination fails to establish non-causality, not even in fantasy worlds. Everything in my world makes sense because everything can be traced to a chain of cause and effect. Not that my logic is infallible. It is not. The reliability of logic relates directly to the amount and validity of evidence and evidence changes as the universe expands. Or as I pay more attention. Or as we learn more about the universe. Or as the Zeitgeist changes. Or, in my writing, as internal chemicals change my moods. Or as I foolishly defy reason and read news articles.

What finds its way here, I hope you enjoy and do not hold it against me if the ideas do not agree with your own. And I hope I manage to find energy and courage enough to continue.