A Blog is born, I reckon

The first wildflowers are here- pink ones in the median. I remember ’07: a wet winter and a mild summer left the usually-scorched road sides lush with all kinds of color, even into August. I can’t remember much about ’08. Or was ’08 the good summer, and ’07 the forgettable one? I forget.
There’s at least one instance a week where I stop and realize that my memory is getting duller, or that my emotions are getting muted compared to when I was a kid. These things go hand-in-hand: memory and emotion. Maybe there just isn’t much new stuff in my life to surprise me anymore, things in the recent past just get mushy in my mind, and so the years just roll by. If this is the trend, I am determined to change it.

Resolution #1: Be surprised more. Do more cool stuff.

I also think writing could be an important part of this phenomenon. Every Wednesday my eleven-year-old son brings home a folder of his week’s work: pages of writing and analysis, thoughts and descriptions. I don’t write anymore. I’ve never come into work on the first day of fall and had my boss say, “I want a 3 page essay about your summer on my desk by close of business today. Be sure to include your three favorite things, and at least one thing you didn’t like about it.” And so the summer and my memories of it slip away, and life has just become that much shorter.

Resolution #2: I will write in my blog at least one time a week, and include at least one picture.

The more stuff I do, and remember doing, the longer life will be. Or, seem, anyways. So my plan is basically to stay a kid- a perpetual Tom Sawyer. To keep imagining, exploring, planning adventures- and then be sure and complete my self-imposed writing assignment.

My first adventure: to make my canoe sail, and then to see where it takes me.