blog.johntyndall.com

So here we go.

I’ve hesitated for quite a while when confronted with, “You should start a blog.” I mean, it’s the cool thing to do; high schoolers and grandmothers are blogging with more initiative and consistency than doing homework or knitting sweaters. Frankly, I guess I never had the time—or the ambition—to keep up with such a task. Once upon a time (when a blog was still an uncondensed web log and Google didn’t own Blogger), I attempted The Way It Is; but after one post (a meager endeavor at best), I abandoned it.

Here is a new effort.

I’ve reached that next stage in my life, a mid-midlife crisis of sorts, and with all the changes, now is as good a time as any to start saturating the web with the details of my life. I’m not sure what the direction, motivation, or purpose of this venture will be; however, I know that we’ll figure it out along the way.

This is the first post—a milestone—and I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a decent topic. It’s just like episodic television: you need a basis, a hook, some kind of catalyst to keep the people coming back and wanting more. Most blogs I’ve looked at sort of just puke up out of nowhere: one day there’s nothing, and BAM—your cat ate all the Frankenberry. I like the effect, though; it’s like a remote, and someone’s just flipped on your life.

But what about 10 years from now (or even 6 months) when you go back to your first post for some inspiration and reflection and all you see is, “Today GreatStarts went from homestyle potatoes to hash browns and one giant egg blob to egg pieces”?  Actually, though, this is a bad example.

Here’s why.

Home-style potatoes represent days gone by of an era when one could spend Saturday morning cutting, boiling, and frying potatoes. Hey… sprinkle on some salt, some pepper, some garlic powder even. It’s time-consuming, but in the end, you’ve got some tasty suds. Take hash browns, then: some sort of conglomeration of potato-like substances, is that some sort of paste keeping things together, and preservatives packed inside a crispy shell. Hash browns are products of Fast Food—no time to cook, too busy to eat, always on the run.

Furthermore, we humans were once a civilization of wholes. That is, we were a giant egg blob of a happy family. Introduce war, pestilence, capitalism, and George W. Bush, and now the ties that have bound us together for so long—our very identities—have been shattered, ripped, and torn just like the egg pieces.

Despite the fact that the change in GreatStarts represents the downfall of a busy, separate society, I’ve found the reason to keep on going, motivation that things will one day get better, that the meaning of life will finally be revealed: Indiana Jones IV, baby.