How Often Do You Get Over Blogging?

Blogging, blogging, blogging.

I've been doing it for about three years now, mostly on a weekly basis, often daily, but lately that distance has been slipping further and further. It's easy for a month to go by without an entry.

Anne Frasier said that a blog has a lifetime of about a year and a half, probably a close match to the hormones generated during any new relationship, that good old honeymoon period. Mine's obviously gone for longer. The idea for the original blog was that I would write it as my fictional character and alter-ego, Danny Hawaii. That idea didn't hold for too long (mostly because my stories never lived up to the character's name), and after about six months I just felt silly doing it.

My thoughts where that if I was to become a real author type personage, that I should damn well act like one and start now. After a brief flirtation with the idea of a pen name (because I didn't think my own name was marketable), I decided to stick to who I was and thus this blog was born. The very early entries were hand-imported from the Danny Hawaii blog and are still accessible in the sidebar.

Along the way, I've experimented with all sorts of posts, ranging from quick images with only a title, to what I hope are well thought-out pieces that are almost articles. At one point I even created another blog called 'Food What I Ate'. It was a surreal food blog, following my culinary adventures with mostly inappropriate captioning. The photos are still on my Flickr account, but the blog no longer exists.

I suppose Crimespace does take up a fair amount of my wet CPU power, which leaves just about enough for writing and other forms of entertainment. Every so often, I'll have an item of writing-related news to share, but I'm not a prolific short story writer, so those are few and far between.

Just to make it clear, because I'm sure the tone of this post implies that I'm saying goodbye ... I'm not. I'm still here and I'll be staying here, but you can take this as something of an explanation of my slackness in posting. And it always helps to get my thoughts out there, always makes it more real.

So how often do you get over blogging, you blogging types out there?

A lost and faithless fellow blogger wants to know.

Oh, So NOW It's In Fashion

Went to the exhibition over a year ago, bought the book around the same time, love to sniff through the pages every so often. Even spent the last six months writing most of a novel inspired by the photos, but now that Peter Doyle's CITY OF SHADOWS has been published overseas I really did need someone like Karl Lagerfeld to tell me the book was good.

Amazing what passes for news these days. If fame, fortune or good looks aren't attached to something, it's as if it isn't even valid.

Article and photo from the Sydney Morning Herald

The Meaning Of Life

It could lie somewhere in this article:

From The Australian:

JAMES Gleeson believes that art is society's strongest link between the past, the present and the future.

And to ensure the grand tradition of Australian art continues well into the 21st century, the painter is putting all of his money - $16 million of it - where his mouth is.

In what is by far the biggest monetary donation received by the Art Gallery of NSW in its 104-year history, Gleeson has pledged his entire estate to the Sydney landmark.

"I thought about it quite seriously for a long time, and I decided that it was the logical thing for me to do," said the 91-year-old, who is considered Australia's pre-eminent surrealist painter.

World Peace

Damn it. I was supposed to post something really silly today. Instead I wrote this half-baked 'Save The World' poem in a fit of self-righteousness, prompted by the complete lack of media coverage for the International Day Of Peace, which I also happened to ignore.

APATHY

I don't care what your religion is
As long as you
Never kill another human being

I don't care what your beliefs are
As long as you
Don't impose them on others

I don't care if you're offended
As long as you
Know you are no more important than anyone else

I don't care who you are
Come have a beer with me

How To Save The World

Religion, politics and war are all prominent topics pervading the world's media and our thoughts at this point in history. I have some strong opinions on all of these, which basically amounts to a wish that all three did not exist. But focusing on a wish like that is ignoring the reality of the problems in our world.

Today I tried three times to write a coherent explanation of my thoughts and feelings on these subjects and couldn't come up with anything that expressed the truth of what is inside me. It was almost as if an answer to everything was hiding in a corner of my mind and all I had to do was take the correct mental route to let it out into the world.

But it didn't happen and I gave up. It's all just too complicated.

So instead I'll share with you a little ditty, courtesy of Zen Stories To Tell Your Neighbors.

It might be what I was really looking for.

SPIDER

A Tibetan story tells of a meditation student who, while meditating in his room, believed he saw a spider descending in front of him. Each day the menacing creature returned, growing larger and larger each time. So frightened was the student, that he went to his teacher to report his dilemma. He said he planned to place a knife in his lap during meditation, so when the spider appeared he would kill it. The teacher advised him against this plan. Instead, he suggested, bring a piece of chalk to meditation, and when the spider appeared, mark an "X" on its belly. Then report back.

The student returned to his meditation. When the spider again appeared, he resisted the urge to attack it, and instead did just what the master suggested. When he later reported back to the master, the teacher told him to lift up his shirt and look at his own belly. There was the "X".

I'm interested to see what thoughts this story triggers. Share away if you feel an inkling to. I promise to write something far sillier in my next post.