Wednesday, 2/28/01

I'm quite proud of myself today. I can walk. Of course, I've been walking with some competence for a couple decades now, but I didn't expect to be able to use that skill today. That would be because I went for a four mile run with Peggy yesterday. It had been months since I had run anywhere except to the fridge or the restroom, and I hadn't run four miles since, well, maybe ever. I trained to run 1/64th of that distance, after all. So I'm sore, as I expected, but I am still mobile, which proves that I'm not in as bad a shape as I thought. In other news, Safeway has brought the ambrosia of the gods to earth, and lo, they have put it in the bulk food bins and preserved it with sulphur dioxide. Behold! Dried pineapple rings! I can't get enough of them. They're better than candy. So, I was thinking a little bit about why, in the last couple blawg entries, I've shown concern about my audience, or lack thereof, whereas before it made no difference. I think it has to do with the original intent behind this thing. My primary reason for starting blawg was writing practice. I wanted to revive my dormant writing skills, and this was the perfect medium. In attempting to entertain an anonymous and largely non-existent audience with my thoughts and anecdotes, I could develop the skill of relating uninteresting material in an interesting manner. It's something I admire quite a bit in other people. For such a purpose, whether or not an observer exists is unimportant. All that is necessary is the possibility of an observer. On the 19th... well, things got personal. And it no longer makes sense for me to do the kind of light, happy-go-lucky writing that I was doing before, because now I've got something real to write about. But the original purpose of writing was to practice being entertaining and interesting, not to tell an unhappy story that I already know, or wallow in self-pity, or otherwise be depressing. When I do that, I feel self-conscious. And that brings the audience into it. I don't know. Maybe this is the only way that blawg will become meaningful in any sense. I like to think that my webpage shows who I am, that it represents me. But how can it if I don't let my writing become personal? It's 4:30 in the morning, and I'm having trouble thinking clearly... ...