Time On My Hands, undo_1

I suppose I blog because it's therapeutic. The great Wiktionary describes therapy as a derivative of the Ancient Greek word therapeia: to attend, to treat, to heal, to cure, to serve. I'm not sure what I'm attending to, healing or curing. Certainly nothing of yours. Perhaps I provide an occasional piece of humor or an item to ponder.

Blogging helps organize those seemingly random thoughts that bounce between my ears into something that I've created. It's true that I plagiarize many of the thoughts that I share, but don't we all? Haven't musicians been doing that since day one? From Mozart to hip hop rifts, musicians have been borrowing ideas to fill their scores. But I digress. For me, I blog to process, create and plagiarize when necessary. It's cathartic. Still, it's ultimately a selfish thing to do and I do it solely for my own edification. Other than a handful of my most gracious readers, nobody really reads, much less thinks about this crap anyway. At least I hope not.

In writing, it's the editing that is the chore. It's easy to type away until *wallah* it's finished. I wish I could just click the publish button be done with it. Fred can probably do that and his thoughts come out cohesive and punctuated neatly. Who cares if the subject matter is vulgar. He makes perfect sense on first draft. I suppose that Bryan edits but only because he does this as a professional editor; he's probably able to write and edit simultaneously. His blog is prolific and filled with wit. Munson? I'm pretty sure that he edits because like me, he's borderline nuts. Still, Munson also produces a lot of good stuff and many of his comments are longer than almost all of Fred's blogs. How does he have time to edit?

Editing becomes a compulsive chore for me. Before hitting the easy publish button, I look back and discover a minefield of random and rough thoughts I've just scattered across the screen. Sigh. Time to polish. It's usually during the editing process when I begin to wonder if this is the best use of my time. The irony is that I've already stated that I blog for my own edification. Hence, I edit for it too. What vanity!

In the end, I could just edit everything out but for the one gem -- that 1% -- of what I set out to share in the first place. In this way, I'd save time editing and spare the reader of time spent reading all of this.

I dunno....



Perhaps I should have watched the Super Bowl.