I have not read all 530 blog posts I created over many years, but I did read some, and I have come to the conclusion that I should return to blog on this site, because the archive of these posts gave me a walk down memory lane, which was overall a real pleasure.

No one subscribes to a random blog these days. So what.

I have no social media anymore. So what.

Can I tell you something astonishing?

God told me something. I don’t know what to make of it. He told me to write a book a year every year for the next 20 years. 

He said nothing about readers. He said nothing about publication. He said nothing about content.

I wish I had some better ideas for what to write about. One hope: that beyond the many words I write in a journal day after day (two journals, to be more precise—the difference in purpose of those journals is unclear to me), writing something I publish on the web several times a week, and reading some of the other 530 posts I’ve made in the past, should surely give me a few ideas for what to write a book about.

-Robby

I write something every day.

Most often I write by hand, most recently with my favorite sharpie retractable gel pens, black, 0.7. I write in notebooks. Since 1985, when Mrs. Yoder, my 10th grade English teacher made us, I have written nearly daily. We used spiral bound steno pads in that class, and she made us write a minimum of three pages a week. I think I always wrote more, sometimes making up stories, sometimes just write about my life and what was happening.

I write a lot about writing, and often about not writing, or more to the point, not writing a book.

I have to write. It’s how I think.

My journals for the past year have made their way also to OneNote, where I sometimes ebed photos, clip quotes, hyperlink to articles I like, and so forth. I don’t know why I keep two different kinds of journals with no discernible difference in writing style and no carefully articulated purpose for either.

I keep a little spiral notebook in my man-purse for times when I feel the need to write when I don’t have my regular journal or my iPad handy. I do not journal using my phone.

I like best the feel of the pen on paper. But typing also feels good, too. Especially in OneNote, the white letters appearing on the dark background.

So why blog?

All the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written the past nearly 40 years have been for not audience at all. I haven’t actually imagined the audience a new blog might find. By facetiously calling myself an independent journalist, which is of course true, I aspire to some sort of story-telling on this site. How frequently or of what topics I will write, besides more meta-blogs like this one, I do not know.

I am creating a website, and this blog will be embedded in the website. The website will have other pages dedicated to other things.

But this blog, white background, simple black type, will be the primary place some of what I write for public consumption is published.

P.S. I take requests. Feel free to comment and make one.

Somehow I’d forgotten how much I had written and posted on this blog going back nearly a decade.  In case you, too, my faithful readers, had forgotten, check out my archives. 

All I can say is, wow.  Just.  Wow.

And now it’s been a nearly five years since I last added anything to this completely arbitrary collection of musings, linked articles, images, videos and such. 

Going forward, I have no plan to turn this into a carefully organized, thematically coherent, anything… I’m just going to post things and put them out there and see what happens.  But if I do ever manage to write something worth sharing with a wider audience, I fully intend to post it to Medium.

Someday I might create a website, because as I think about it, I’ve produced a lot of stuff that might be of some use to someone in the world somewhere.

But for now, this is merely an announcement of my return.

For anyone who cares, entries will be numbered by the year.entry.  That is, 18.1 means, first entry of 2018.

Completely unrelated, here’s a video I watched this morning.  Since we had a snow day today, and since we’re starting Dante in LIT 227, I gave this as an assignment for Monday.

I hope we all do understand that all this crap I write is unproofed first draft crap, written fast and furious when I have a few moments from all the other crap I gotta do.  We do understand that.  Don’t we?

"I recently observed a man from whom I believe God wanted to rid the strength of the self nature.  It is my perception that although what he says is true and comes from the inward work of the spirit upon his heart, his intellect is so powerful that it overpowers the gentle work of grace without his even knowing it.  Therefore, some of the truth of what he says is lost.  People are won more by the annointing that flows from a heart full of grace--by the weapon of love--than by powerful argument. 

Aren't the truths that you speak analyzed too much by the intellect and further polished by the imagination?  Their effect seems to be lost because they lack simplicity and directness.  Like a song, they sound wonderful; but they do not substantially reach and touch the heart.  There is no annointing. 

Aren't you always looking for something clever or novel to say?  Aren't you really showing off the power of your intellect rather than standing back and letting the simple truth speak for itself? Consider what I have said, and the light will reveal much to you.  Am I speaking to simply? I only want to speak the truth and the truth alone."

 



Today I read the best student paper on the Odyssey I’ve ever read in ten years of teaching the poem. The best thing: it’s a student who took my Written Communication course and who continues to show improvement as a writer. Persistence and practice pays off.