Oh faithful readers and true believers, what can I say? I sit down to uncork the bottle of The Incredible Southeast Homebrew Tour, and find the brew may be too strong, the tale too much in the telling.
The truth is, I could probably write a novella about the ten day trip I just took. It could at least be an extended serial in a magazine or something. Not that much happened, but describing all the nothing that did happen—the small meaningless pockets of randomness that define my life—that always seems to take forever. And really, does anybody care but me? I don’t mean that in a self pitying way. But the minutiae and dregs of other’s lives are usually not very interesting to others.
At that point though, I might as well not blog at all.
I did try to break it up into pieces and parts, to post as I went, but the Interwebz was unavailable, and my initial ramblings got eaten and lost in the mysterious ether of my iPad. There’s something to that—to losing a written account. I don’t know if others suffer from this, but it is sometimes very hard for me to rewrite something, to replace lost text.
It’s a combination of feelings. Part of it being the energy and spontaneity that’s only present in that first attempts, sadly absent in subsequent tries. The other is the exorcism-like quality of writing: once you’ve put it down, you’ve released it, expunged it. Good or bad, it’s out there, and recalling it past that point is an act of summation, drawing out, calling forth, which seems monumental in energy expenditure and impossible in relation to fealty to detail.
All of which is a long winded and laborious way of saying I’m rather too lazy to have to rethink that which I’ve already set down at least once.
However, there are pictures! And I torment you so with endless text that it would seem unfair no to include an illustrated tome here and there.
So, it’s decided then. Forthcoming will be at least one account, with illustration, of my recent ramblings and travels. Stand by, sportsfans.
Welcome home, Hawk. I have experienced travel related interwebz failure and feel your frustration. I also find that I use pencil and paper to compose so that when transcribed missals are eaten by the interwebz thay can be recreated from the hardcopy. Rather defeats the luxury of word processing, but saves the anguish of watching a creation vanish before you can hit the send button. Writing is cathartic. When you just need to let something go, write it out. Looking forward to whatever adventures you choose to publish here.
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Believe me, there were definitely some pen to paper moments during the trip. Cathartic is the very word--sometimes the act of writing it all out is like sweating out a fever in the night. You awaken with only the sense that something was amiss, but everything is alright now.
My handwriting is so atrocious that I've found typing to be a far better overall medium. However, there is still something in the act of journalling, or being a diarist. There's so much freedom on a blank page, so many ways to arrange your thoughts, doodle your ideas. Despite the fact that I use a computer daily, blog often, and use Excel to track and organize my life, I find that I still have to refer to my written records, jotted notes, and calendar scribbles for "important" stuff.