Curiosity

It takes me one hour to write each blog post.

I’ve measured this time interval down to the minute in my years as a blogger. And while I don’t track the wordcount as I type, I only publish posts that exceed one thousand words. They don’t have to far exceed that count, but they must exceed it.

The reason I make sure blog posts have that wide berth is because of the nature of the form. Like all literature, blogging has a form. There is a reason publishers do not want to work with debut novelists whose first novel is over 100,000 words. A debut novelist is just exploring the form for the first time, and, in general, will not be able to pull off anything longer than that while staying true to her voice. I just wrapped up a major revision of my novel, and I was happy to see that the book is now just under that threshold. I was happier to know that the novel now sits under that threshold because I cut what I had to in order to make the book better, not to get the book under that threshold.

Poetry has form, of course. Don’t let the postmodernists fool you. Even in breaking from traditional form, a poet is reliant on the form they are breaking to construct what they’ve deconstructed. And it is my hope that my generation of writers—who I prefer to call the new sentimentalists—can overcome the postmodern destructive impulse and the dangerous slope we now find ourselves on: that flimsy cultural trend towards uber-sentimentalism from people I like to call social medialites.

These are all pet theories, true. I sit with these thoughts and develop them over time in secret parts of my mind. Those areas in our thinking that never see the light of day because your spouse doesn’t give a shit about them, and your students can only swallow that which you dilute a bit, and fathers at birthday parties prefer to discuss the waterproofing of basements and the playoff chances of NFL franchises. And I understand all that. And I don’t begrudge any listening entity for what it can hear.

I just know that out of that void comes the blog post. It is not a novel or an essay or a poem. It is that which can’t be discussed at the dinner table or over birthday cake. It is made up of vintage thoughts, aged over time. And time is comprised of the exact sort of suffering and heartache that yields a ripe and juicy wisdom.

The blog form is live literature. It is an unbridled outpour of what experience teaches. It has no other place than on the blog itself, thereby justifying its existence. I’d like to note here that the popularity of blogs predated the popularity of podcasts. Both are similar in nature. I think of podcasts as “blogs on tape” or “audio blogs”. Podcasters sit down and have their thoughts spill directly onto the listener. Bloggers sit down and have their words spill directly onto the reader.

And, for this blog, one thousand words represents the target ramble, the ideal meander. It is at that point when I have become so lost in the words I present to you that I’ve found something worthwhile.

The best blogs don’t have any destination in mind—one thousand words is not a destination. Travelling the same amount of miles won’t put you in the same place. I can reach the same destination traveling in any number of distances, but one single distance will yield countless destinations—none of which can physically resemble the other unless you take the exact same route. That’s physics. And this is blogging. Here I am, halfway to 1K, and I know there are a few more stones to turn over on this walk.

But at least I’ve stumbled across the right question: why is the blog or the podcast so popular?

I’ve thought about this a great deal. And I think the answer is that art is consistently safeguarding the human spirits against the perilous movements of crueler enterprises like politics and commerce and law. The romantics bucked the scientific revolution. The renaissance kicked The Great Chain of Being in the teeth. What we consistently deem as great art is that which captures the human soul in an accuracy that approaches perfection. That capture is difficult in the face of restrictions. And, man oh man, are we facing all sorts of restrictions in today’s world. You know what I mean. If you don’t, try sitting still for an hour. I don’t mean try a guided meditation you find on Youtube. I mean try to remain verifiably still for an hour, loafing in aimless thought. Don’t try to clear your mind of all thoughts, try to follow where your thoughts lead your mind.

If you’re like me, you may find that inward journey to be perilous. It is becoming harder and harder to think things through with any sort of depth or distance. There are so many distractions tugging at our flights of fancy, telling us to land and look up webster’s definition of meditation, or search on the internet for the right Christmas tree farm, or see what World Cup matches your schedule will allow you to see.

With a world of information at our fingertips, any information derived from our own mind becomes remarkably boring, unoriginal, and bland. And yet, we are the source of any information’s utility. We forget this each hour we spend traveling on that crippling information superhighway.

Hence the need for blogs and podcasts. We crave to return to those unstifled thought journeys, but we’ve lost ability to embark. Podcasters and bloggers show us the way. They remind us that, despite living in a world which claims to have everything already answered, we are human beings. And the chief characteristic of the human soul is curiosity.

If knowledge is power, then curiosity is the impulse to be empowered. And the impulse is what will always outlast that which suppresses the impulse because, well, we will survive, motherfuckers. Don’t tread on me. All great stories say approximately the same thing.

So, long live the blog.

There, now I have found my main theme and title for this post, and just in the 1K nick of time: Curiosity.

PS: Another great thing blogging does is it fosters a creative support community.

A writer friend of mine, publishing under the pseudonym Lola Schnoodle, has written a hilarious book from the point of view of, you guessed it, her Schnoodle, Lola. It is a fast and funny read for dog lovers everywhere.

Another writer-in-arms I respect is Steven Washington. He graciously gave me an advance copy of Recovering You. This self-help provides clear instruction on ways to use small and easy daily movement practices to regain control of our mental roadmaps. A great gift: for yourself before the new year or for a loved one in recovery who needs to shake up his or her lifestyle. Meet Steven here.