Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Trouble of Time


I have restarted this blog a few times since the first day I ventured into the modern foray of publicized ideas. Usually a restart follows a long period of "not-posting" inspired by a major shift in life, or a daunting absence of coherent thoughts, preventing me from forming worthwhile paragraphs or even sentences.

My last break came with the arrival of our second son; even before Kellan joined our home in the flesh, his impact was felt and I simply could not find time to reflect and write. That carried on long after he was born, and I failed to produce thoughts even when I had committed to doing so for others. In short, the last 8 months or so have been mostly fruitless on the writing front for me.

Happily, I had Facebook in the meantime. Facebook allowed me more leeway than Twitter, due to larger word count, but did not force me to commit to a full article in the tradition of a blog. I could be petulant when I felt like it, pensive, celebratory, etc. Also, people interacted with me and I prefer dialog to talking to myself, which is how I often feel when blogging.

Thus it was that I spent a great deal of free time writing Facebook statuses and arguing with friends about various subjects, and recently I noticed something interesting: I was writing longer and longer thoughts on Facebook, and was less and less satsified with merely throwing out a blurb here and there.

Now, this may or may not matter to most...it may not be greeted with any joy (oh, so, you mean you're going to talk MORE?) and it is possible that the only good thing which may come from picking up blogging again is I spend less time on Facebook...but I am hoping to begin developing complete thoughts once more and working to present them in an interesting, articulate and enjoyable manner..and hopefully I'll get some readers again...but mostly, I'd love to start writing once more, since it's getting harder and harder for me to imagine a world where I get to return to grad school or ever write a paper important people will read. I miss engaging in discussion, and hope that this might fill some of that need.

The trouble, as always, is finding the time. But we strive on, and pray for grace.

7 comments:

Christian said...

The Dark Lord returns.... All bow.

*bow*

MK Reynolds said...

Reading! Great blog template. :)

Chris said...

Thank you sir.

And thanks so much MK. I am enjoying it too!

Ariel said...

It is good to hear from you again, Mr. Leigh. May you be able to find discussion and writing time wherever you may be.

P.S. I was in your Yorba Linda Inklings class several years ago, if you were wondering who I was. :)

Chris said...

Silly Ariel; of course I remember you. It's been a while; how are you these days? Off doing exciting things in college somewhere?

Ariel said...

Nothing terribly exciting. I am in the Torrey Academy Shakespeare class in Yorba Linda, infiltrating the ranks and all that, and we'll be starting rehearsals on our play this coming week. In other realms of academia, I'm doing college through a program called CollegePlus! (yes there is an exclamation point in their name). With it, I take CLEP tests and am currently studying psychology.

James said...

Welcome back Chris. I love the new banner. I look forward to seeing you get down to business. ;-)