Category: Writing

There are roughly eight billion people on this planet. Today, then, is experienced in eight billion ways. And those are the ways that we could possibly understand – not the trillions of ways various animals, insects, etc. may see today.

For some. today is their first day. Others, their last. For most of us, it’s just another day in a line of days.

But each day is different. Each day can be special. And when we think of the number of ways that today could be perceived, the fact that today is seen through our eyes makes it something that we should cherish.

A lot of my preliminary thoughts for blog posts go into a “scratchpad”. Currently, it’s pretty much a Google Doc that just has page after page of scribblings. One line here, two lines there.

When I do finish something and post it, I highlight the entire thing, leaving a “PUBLISHED on …” note so that I don’t accidentally repost scrolling through them later.

I used to write quite frequently in notebooks – I enjoy the act of writing, using pen on paper – but it’s not something that I was doing with any consistency for a while. At least until last year’s trip to Hawaii.

So I’ve been thinking of the history of the word scratchpad. Looking it up, it’s just the combination of scratch + pad, meaning a pad of scratch paper. A place for preliminary notes.

The thing is, I don’t recall where I first heard it. I’ve been using the term for a while now, at least a couple of years. Perhaps it was referenced in something I read, or heard on the radio. But, the specific escapes me.

The nice thing about a scratchpad is that it just collects and collects and collects. The longer you scratch, the more you build up, and the more fuel you have to throw onto your intellectual fire.

The process is important. How you go about doing things, getting things done. It matters.

But maybe not as much as the fact that it does get done.

Something about writing every day, and keeping notebooks and, honestly, a lot of paper of all sorts, I get to look back and see where I was in time. And for a moment, I can remember.

I think that’s what photos are, in a way, too. Little moments, frozen in time. And looking at them, you can remember words said, feelings shared, or any number of sensations that may have been occurring. And when all we have left of those moments are the time capsules, it’s nice to revisit them sometimes.

Used to be, a movie was rarely over two hours. This was from a lot of factors: shooting on 35mm, for one, was expensive. It was time-consuming to edit. Another, selling tickets at the cinema was very important. If you could keep every movie roughly the same length, then you’d be able to plug and play into most of the screens nationwide.

Now, most of our movie consumption is at home. Nearly all film and television production is digital. The turnaround from filming to distribution is shortened to mere months.

And thus, three-hour or longer movies are much more commonplace. Are they fun to see in the cinema? Well, sometimes. Though it’s much harder to hold off going to the restroom. And you almost certainly have as good a screen at home to watch it later. When it’s streaming.

There’s a point in showing up to the page. Sometimes it’s more than just writing down thoughts. It can be cathartic to, as Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith had similarly stated, “bleed on the page”.

We all write for different reasons. Sometimes we write for more than just one reason. But for people who like writing, we can’t seem to really do without it.

“Every man has his daydream, every man has his goal.”

We all have dreams, of the things we want, and the lives we want to lead. Most of us don’t fully those dreams. I think a lot of it is the relative safety of the familiar vs. the possible risk of the unknown. If anything, we are generally taught to be risk averse.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t think before you leap, or live life dangerously just because you can. But I think it is important to keep your sights set on what you actually want, and to make progress towards it – whether small steps or giant leaps.

Recently I heard someone say, “All words are made up.” Well, technically, yes. All words have an origin, and words are just used to convey something else. The word rock isn’t a rock. The thing, “rock”, is the rock. Some philosopher somewhere definitely went into this. I’m guessing Wittgenstein, but I’ve yet to read any of his work.

Anyway, something that I was thinking about is when technology moves us past the meaning of certain words. Nearly no one has a wired, cradled phone landline in the house any longer, but we still say “hang up the phone”. I don’t hear “tune in” as much anymore, but it is still common enough, though we know longer tune a television to a channel.

That just leaves me wondering, what bits of our lexicon will the next technological achievements make obsolete?

Was trying to pinpoint a direction for these postings. Sometimes I throw things at the blog, and hope it sticks. And thus it becomes this catch all of my thoughts.

Like the blob, it keeps consuming and growing, and even I have no idea what it could become.

But we’re all a bit like. If we don’t have a single direction that we’re heading in, we pick and choose little things to add into our lives. Interests, hobbies, jobs. All these things make us who we are, and quite often, it’s those odd bits about ourselves that are the most interesting.

I was sitting in group discussion some years ago, and a therapist friend of mine was telling us about nerve cells in the stomach. Over 100 million cells, effectively making the gut another brain.

This led to a discussion on why “trusting your gut” is so important. Sometimes intuition is giving you more information than just thinking can. It’s possible that you should be paying more attention to what your stomach is telling you.