Labor Day

So it begins. Finally. A day when the American workforce takes its well-earned respite from the workplace, I am going to attempt to start working. I have no idea where this blog will take me, or if I'm able even to carry it on for more than a day. But one must start somewhere, and they say life is about the journey not the destination. So it will start today, here in Pasadena, California, in my little home office, on my old SONY Vaio desktop. Good luck to me.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the last little necessary push to put finger to keyboard came from a chick flick out now at a theater near you. I am likely to be one of the many hopefuls fueled by the film, Julie & Julia, in which an uninspired customer service representative finds her literary voice through a cooking blog. I, no doubt, am joined by multitudes of aspiring writers who have yet to tap into that inner song; I one of thousands who just might find their deep creative joy by joining the world of everyday e-diarists, spilling their guts online to readers in Nairobi or New Mexico or Neverland. Still, I can't think of a better practice than to launch your thoughts into the ether, connecting, maybe, with the rest of the English-speaking human civilization, and finding friendship or catharsis or lively debate for your innermost emotional workings. Talk about interactive art. Why wait for letters to the editor? Just post your comment and let your author know how utterly useless are his recent musings on the current state of crochet in America. Now we're talking!

My goal is to connect. My passions revolve around the human experience and personal growth: the discovery of our true selves, independent of our fears and families; the webs of friendship we weave that cushion our falls and that are strengthened, each day, by our shared triumphs and tragedies; the disgorgement of yesterday's inner self to make way for our renewed being; the climbing of the rope towards God, however you may define that sublime power, to become the best we can be, in this life and the next.

This blog might get a little heavy if I keep talking like that, though. So I'll concentrate on my other passions and hope we find some deeper meaning in things like baseball, barbecues, beer, architecture, literature, television, film, and crossword puzzles. And perhaps some occasional musings on marriage, work, family, church, community and other things clearly less important than sports and food.

Because that's what a diary is, no? One man's perspective on the world at-large, take it or leave it, written down for his own sanity because he can't keep it in any longer and feels the absolute need to share it with his brothers and sisters. And ultimately it won't matter in a hundred thousand years how many people read it and liked it, or read it and hated it, or never read it at all. As with all things these words and thoughts belong only to God, the keeper of time and space, and will amount only to one tiny step, one single brick in the building of the universe. But the truly beautiful thing is, without each one of our lives, our thoughts, our words, either read or ignored by humankind, the entire cosmic skyscraper would collapse. That's how absolutely crucial we all must be, and why I feel so anxious to put mine down on e-paper.

So it begins.