To Blog or To Be

On the last day of October 2011, I reconsider my one year as a blogger. (http://twheatscarousel.blogspot.com/2010/10/and-so-it-begins.html)  In a world wide sense, by blogging, realize what a grain of salt, or a single leaf one person is. We last one season then finish by falling unattached from the giant tree, or by swooshing out to sea with the next big wave, to become the sea, or - well, you get the picture. In a huge homogeneous mix of planet people, everyone who is able, types, talks, performs on this fake paper, film or microphone on tables/desks/laptops, thinking we are one wise/funny/serious individual writer, actor, business person, with something really, really uniquely important to say (or sell) to the WHOLE WORLD!!  The Whole World - I can't even fathom that. I still don't get it. Really, I neither sell nor have wisdom or humor to offer, but I blab along, with the rest of them, with the thought that I CAN, so I do, and I will.

Do you wonder, how those piles of words and letters that people manage to put together about personal days and nights, dumped out there, floating around net space, are of any real value?  Businesses calculate and circulate paragraphs, pictures and promises to THE WHOLE WORLD.  Will it be useful, in time, except for selling or preaching, or self indulgence just TODAY?

Face to face contact with a breathing smiling/frowning/talking person seated across a table, (without a computer and printer on it) or footsteps/friends/ bird and dog sounds; leaves and flowers, gravel, clinking dog leashes, laughing children - those fill a day so much more satisfactorily than a typed monologue on a too-bright monitor pasted with yesterday's pictures or movies or news flashing away.

But then again, when I see a family photo, of people I love and miss, or get a note that says "please pray", or find from an antique census a note, or a book with pictures of handwriting and quotes from persons long six feet under, there is definitely a connection to real person, a place, one life.  Maybe sounding off  with a fountain pen/typewriter/keyboard or giving a view of a different life through a tiny glass hole in an iphone/camera, in "living" fake color there on my desk, is hugely important. Is it just for today? is it just for me or will it last longer, and go farther? Does it really matter?

Blogging, is about a promise to carry through a discipline, rather than giving anything to anyone else. Admittedly, I find a connection to pioneers, explorers/scientists/spiritual teachers, wise people, ancestors, angels and demons.  There are risks, there is pain, we make and have joy; maybe we have a plan, or see creation happening. Will Steve Jobs' heirs or Bill Gates' eventually regret their relative's role in blogging, texting, netting history. I read that the guy that made the science of the atom bomb available came to regret his role, and the outcome of his adventure. A while ago, I also read some tiny print on  some software's terms of use; it was an appeal - to use technology for good. That's my prayer today.

I'm just not quite sure, if there are big enough rewards, in blogging.  I'm a simple person.  So, I have decided to continue blogging (at least through April 2012).  

I have not decided whether  "TO BLOG" is as important as "TO BE". Or if they mean the same.