Why Now?

I've been putting this off for so long vacillating between thinking I had nothing much to blog about (who would even be interested?) and thinking that writing for myself would be kind of self-indulgent because the time could be better spent on other more productive things (making lesson plans, losing weight, running programs, protesting in the streets, etc. etc.). All sorts of excuses. So last night I said to myself, what the hell, let's break the impasse and GET ON WITH IT. What I've rediscovered in the process is the pleasure of participating in that "pointless blossoming" that is creation.

At the back of my mind in all of this has been one of Langston Hughes famous pieces, a poem that especially resonates with me in midlife:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

This blog is an attempt to deal with "dreams deferred". I remember wanting to be a creative writer when I was about 9 or 10, but giving up by the time I was in college. At the time, I thought I didn't have the talent or the life experience--a facility with the written word wasn't enough. Since then, I have continued to write, but rarely for pleasure. Now I realize that part of the reason I never ventured further into creative writing was because I always had in mind some hidden audience I had to please, some ennobling mission I had to fulfill. This "bowing to the audience" is death to the creative spirit. Mine at least.

So why am I blogging today? Because I need to to keep a vital part of my spirit alive. Because the discipline of putting things into words clarifies my own thinking. Because it gives me a modest joy. While I still hope some of this stuff actually connects with people and helps them in some way, I believe that this will happen when what I write proves helpful and pleasurable first of all to myself.