I started blogging in December of 2008. One of my dad’s friends asked me, “Why? Why do you write for anybody to see?” It was a legitimate question. I didn’t have a great answer. I think my answer was something along the lines of, “Why not? A lot of people do it. It’s a way of spreading ideas.” I had read Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” earlier that year and also hunted down and read a copy of his earlier work, “The Idea Virus”. I’d gotten the message that I had something worth saying and just needed a forum to say it. I also recognized that I needed to exercise my writing muscles and work towards those 10,000 hours. So, I started to blogging.
I think my parents read my stuff regularly. I have a friend from high school who comments from time to time. I know she reads. Apart from that, there’s not a lot of evidence that I get a lot of traffic. A few people have made their way to my blog using key word searches. I wrote about paella once, and I got some hits for that one. I think people came looking for a recipe. Another time, I saw a spike in traffic because I used the word “nipple” in a story about my kids. That got some attention, but I am sure there was a good deal of disappointment when they realize where they’d been led. But I keep writing, anyway.
Why? Why bother continuing to write? Well, I still have something to say. The internet still provides the forum in which to say it. I still need the exercise. I still want the 10,000 hours. However, I have found over time that I write fewer and fewer posts each year, not more and more. To be fair, I write in other forums, too, but even that hasn’t really fulfilled my…desire. Yes, I have a desire to write, to get better at writing, to use writing as my vehicle for communication. I just lost my focus, my sense of purpose. I meandered too far. I covered too many topics. I mixed this with that and threw in a bit of that other thing for good measure. In the process, I lost the desire to write because writing became more chore than pleasure. Let’s face it: pleasure is good. I like pleasure. I want pleasure. Call me crazy.
In February 2012, I will turn 40. You only turn 40 once, right? You only wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say to yourself, “Self, I am 40,” once, right? Well, technically speaking, no. You actually wake up 40 365 times, every day for an entire year. And this year’s a Leap Year, so I actually will wake up 366 times as a 40-year-old man. Therein lies my new purpose.
For the next 366 days, I will provide you with unprecedented access to the mind of a 40-year-old man living in the United States of America. I’m talking about unrestricted access into the inner workings of a middle-class, American male. It’s all yours for absolutely free. Am I promising 366 meaningful posts? No. That doesn’t appeal to me. Remember: pleasure. Pleasure and purpose. That’s what’s driving the change in focus. Instead, I will provide you with approximately 5 posts a week for 52 weeks. OK, maybe 50. I figure somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 or so posts. Some will be meaningful, and some will be meaningless. Some will be expositions of the literary kind seldom seen these days. Others will surely seem like dribble. This, though, is the beauty of the American male in the year 2012: you get what you get and you’ll like what you get. My blog, my rules.
So, dear reader (aka Mom and Dad), join me as we explore what it means to be…Man at 40.
Illuminate Possibilities 