Learning a Second Language--Blogging

I'm fairly old according to my grown children. I tell people that I may not be older than dirt, but that I am older than a major South American capital. I was born in 1954; Brasilia, Brazil was built from the ground up in 1958.

My age does not bother me. In fact, I have yet to feel that I am on the downhill side of life--every year is better than the year past. I've always felt that my days here on the earth will be plentiful and that death will open a door to someplace better.

I have always expressed myself in writing. From grade school stories to junior high poems replete with teen-age angst to essays and papers in high school and college stating my (obviously correct) opinions about everything, I have put my thoughts in print.

First I used paper and pen, then a nifty little portable Smith Corona electric typewriter. I think I adjusted fairly well to using a computer, if for no other reason than the almost magical cut and paste technology. I write in journals, in notebooks, and on a blueberry Mac that I have to say goodbye to because I am reluctantly entering the PC world so that I can transfer my writing to my school computer or to my daughter's with more ease.

Learning necessary technology, however, is one thing. Blogging is another thing all together. "Blog" isn't even a word. (Neither is email for that matter.) I have made unkind statements about bloggers--referring to their need for real lives and assuming that they were a bunch of incompetent writers who couldn't get published anywhere else. Label me whatever you will--I can think of several cutting remarks without anyone's help. Then I read my daughter's blog. She has been a gifted writer for as long as she could write, and her blogs are one more evidence of that.

The truth is that I'm not writing enough. I teach creative writing, but I'm not writing. I start and stop, make and break resolutions, but ultimately I keep moving toward the unacceptable destination of Regret.

I've made numerous mistakes, endured a few life trials and chosen quite badly once or twice, but right now there are no significant regrets in my 54 years. Except the one. Not writing enough--often enough or well enough.

And so I've entered this foreign land of blogging. Not to change the world, not to entertain anyone, not to assuage my guilt for wasting time in the past, but simply to write. I don't require an actual audience; thinking that someone might possibly read this is enough to inspire me to edit, improve and rewrite. And if that means I have to embrace the language of technology a bit more completely than I planned, so be it.

Here's to blogging and whatever future technology has to offer to the world of words.