Blogging Again

I haven't blogged in over a year. I think it's time I resume. Writing is probably what I do best, yet, I haven't been doing it. Not here. Not like this.

I think I know why. I think I concluded sometime back that I have nothing worthwhile to say. So, if nobody, including me, wants to read my hollow words, why bother writing them?

Yet, what else am I going to do that engages me more? I haven't been habitually bored doing what I've been doing. I've been reading content online and on my Kindle. I've been posting on Facebook and reading and commenting on other people's posts. I've been watching entertaining programs on TV in the evening. I've been listening to great podcasts and to my beloved Hiromi and other musicians online at home and on my walks, and on CD when I drive. Even so, something's been missing.

I haven't been writing content that forces me to reflect as deeply, sustain my focus as strongly, and express myself as fully as I can. My inner light may be dim, but I think I still want to let what there is of it shine. I've been proverbially hiding it under a bushel for too long.

No, I'm not a smart guy with brilliant things to say that people probably want to read. But I am a guy who still desires to do what he does best instead of stewing in the chronic dissatisfaction of settling for less. And I'm someone who wants to get better at what he does best by making it clearer, more concise, more veridical, and more pleasing to himself and to any reader who may come along.

So, it's time to get and stay with it. Maybe I won't do all my effortful writing here. But I need to do it somewhere and keep doing it. And, for the time being, this is probably as good a place as any and better than most.

Should I Change How I Speak and Write?

I've read recently that psychologists have conducted research suggesting that people with deteriorating brains from Alzheimer's and other dementias exhibit telltale signs early on in the ways they speak and write. That is, they express themselves with diminishing sophistication in their syntax and resort to more concrete words and convey fewer abstract ideas. 

If neuropathology causes this degradation of language, I'm wondering if this unfortunate process might work both ways. That is, if a deteriorating brain causes deteriorating use of language, might deliberately simplifying one's syntax and using simpler and more concrete words cause the brain to deteriorate faster or in worse ways than it would otherwise?

I ask because I feel a growing urge to radically change the way I write and speak so that it's much simpler, clearer, and more succinct than it has been.

Of course, I want to continue addressing the generally abstract topics and issues that interest me most not only without oversimplifying them but by being more incisive than I ever have before. Yet, I wonder if this is even possible, and worse still, whether I might initiate my brain's precipitous decline.

I tell myself that the greater effort I'll need to make to speak and write the way I wish will preserve and maybe even strengthen my brain's verbal centers and my corresponding language fluency. I also plan to do even more focused and extensive reading in various subjects, to write more, and to even systematically expand my vocabulary. So, maybe my concerns are groundless.

But they're still my concerns.

Time to Shine

I used to post here every year on my birthday. Then I missed a year or maybe more. This year, I missed again. Or I decided not to post. I decided it would be better if I waited until the day after to write about the day before.

I enjoyed my birthday yesterday. Maybe more than usual. It's not that I did anything special. There was no party and cake or romantic dinner with my wife in some fancy restaurant.

Instead, I drove to my wife's Thai Buddhist temple and presented gifts to the temple in return for receiving good karma that will help me enjoy a better life in my next incarnation, or something like that. I don't believe that stuff, but I like to give and to help out the temple even if I receive nothing more from it than the pleasure of giving. And I like to please my wife who wants me to give to help out the temple and earn good karma for myself and for her.

After the presentation and the usual morning round of chanting, which I always sit back with eyes closed and listen to respectfully while the others carry on, I piled delicious potluck Asian food on my plate and savored every bite until I was uncommonly full by recent standards. And many people, including some of the monks, wished me a Happy Birthday.

After all that, I drove home while my wife remained behind, and I took a nap and then rose and started thanking people on Facebook for their birthday wishes. I really enjoyed reading their wishes and replying to them. Yes, I harbor no illusions that my birthday means anything special to them, unless they happen to share it, which some of my Facebook friends and acquaintances do. I know they're just being nice in what is probably an obligatory sort of way. After all, there's always someone we know on Facebook who's having a birthday no matter what date it is, especially if we know a lot of people on Facebook. Yet, I still appreciate, more than I ever have before, that they took a few seconds to write to me.

As I wrote on Facebook today, the older I get, and I'm well into my 60's now, the more I appreciate the simpler things in life. Yesterday I was and today I am still filled with gratitude that I was able to experience yet another birthday and that I am still alive and still in abundant possession of my modest faculties.

Is this because I know my time is running out? That's surely part of it. My time IS running out. And given what may loom in my near future, it might be better if it runs out sooner than later. But I think it's also the case that when we've been around long enough, we come to realize, if we're lucky, that many of the so-called "big" things in life--i.e., buying costly or prestigious items,  accomplishing ballyhooed goals and reaping extravagant rewards for it--is often not as fulfilling as stroking my dying cat on my lap, seeing my wife off to work in the morning, reading a wonderful essay on philosophy or science, listening to a beautiful Hiromi solo, or thanking someone for their birthday message.

I don't know if I'll be around next year to write on or soon after my birthday. I never know from year to year, and I know even less this year than ever before. Yet, from this point on, I'm going to write more and do more and be better for as long as I can. Not because I expect external rewards for it. But because it's my inner calling. To do my best and be my best.

I will focus much of my effort, wherever I am and whatever my circumstances, on producing a podcast and writing a book on free will and on becoming a professional writer and podcaster. Nobody would hire me for anything else because I'm old and have nothing to offer them. But I can speak and I can write and I can deliver something to this world that nobody else can exactly like me, especially if I stop trying to be different or better than anyone else. And I've hidden my light under a bushel for far, far too long.

Time to shine.

Refusing to Give Up This Time?

I recently posted an entry about feeling demoralized over an Op-Ed piece I was preparing to submit to a leading newspaper. I wrote that I used an online website to analyze the piece for readability, and it indicated that my Op-Ed used too many big words and long, complex sentences to be read easily by anyone with less than a college graduate or post-graduate education. I also wrote that other pieces of mine that I had analyzed on that website scored largely the same, and that I didn't know what to do about this, because I felt uneasy about trying to write any simpler than I thought I did already. But I said I would do my best to "overhaul my writing style" without losing my voice in the process.

Well, as I indicated later, I polished the Op-Ed piece and submitted it, and I've been waiting several days to see if the newspaper accepted it. But they haven't, so I don't think they will. And this leaves me wondering what I should do. Should I just give up? I tried, they didn't take it, and so now it's time to admit defeat and move on to something else? Or is the message of my piece important enough that I should rewrite and resubmit it? That way, even if they don't publish it, I'll have made a nobler effort than I have in a long time to accomplish something important to me. What's more, I will have worked on improving the readability, and, thus, marketability of my writing.

I think I should go for it. It won't be easy, and I've spent much of my life avoiding what's difficult. But not this time?

Judging One's Own Judgment

Something happened yesterday while I was bowling in my league that has never happened before in my nearly fifty years of league bowling. I threw my strike ball, it hit the pins a little farther to the left (I bowl right-handed) than I wanted it to, and a pin remained standing. But not for long. Because another pin rolled across the pin deck from left to right and knocked it over just as the pinsetter raced down to grab it.

Bowling league rules say that after a ball is thrown, if the pinsetter knocks a pin over while it's standing or touches it while it's falling, that pin has to be reset on the deck. But it looked to me like the pin fell over without the pinsetter touching it, and one of my teammates, who was watching at the time, said it looked that way to him too. But members of the other team and some spectators in back of us said that the pinsetter touched the pin as it was falling, while a bowler on the next pair of lanes agreed with me and my teammate that the pin fell untouched by the pinsetter.

What to do? As I said, I've never dealt with this situation before. That is, I've seen pinsetters knock over pins while they were falling, but it was obvious that this is what happened. But yesterday's instance was not nearly so clear-cut. There was a difference of opinion between those of us who saw it happen.

I ended up taking a strike instead of having to reset the pin and shoot at it for a spare. But I think the haggling that occurred over it disrupted my concentration so much that on my next ball, I did something I haven't done in league for decades. I threw my strike ball in the gutter. I followed that up by leaving a pocket 10-pin on my spare ball and going nine-out for the frame, which was very costly to our team at a vital moment in our second-quarter position round match against the opposing team. The other team ended up narrowly winning the second quarter and making it into the league roll-offs at the end of the season, while my team finished second for the second consecutive quarter.

I'm writing about this because it touches upon something that has long been an issue with me. I've always lacked faith in my own opinions and powers of observation.

I've heard of psychology experiments where test subjects were placed in a room with confederates of the researchers, and they ended up concurring with the obviously false opinions of the confederates in response to questions about, say, which line in a series of lines was the longest. And it's not that the test-subjects necessarily lied just so that they wouldn't catch flack from the others. In some cases, they actually believed that their response was correct because, even if it didn't really look correct to them, it must be because it agreed with everybody else's.

I have little doubt that if I were a test-subject in such an experiment, I'd do the same thing. I'd figure that since everybody else said a certain line appeared to be the longest, it must be even if it didn't look that way to me. Well, actually, given the fact that I was a psychology major in college and know about these experiments, maybe I wouldn't do this. But otherwise, I think I very well might.

Yet, I'm glad that I stood up for my perspective of what actually happened to that falling pin yesterday instead of silently submitting to the protests of those who had a different perspective. I didn't insist that my perspective was correct, because I know that human perception and eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable and that my own perceptions may be more unreliable still.  But I continued to insist that it looked to me as though the pinsetter didn't touch the pin until the issue was finally resolved by the opposing team agreeing to credit me with a strike.

But this raises a broader issue of how much I can trust my own judgments about anything, especially when it's about myself. In my previous two blogposts, I questioned my longstanding judgment that I was a good enough writer to potentially earn money from writing. I wondered whether my dream and goal of writing professionally might be akin to a wretched or mediocre singer aspiring to become the next "American Idol." I wrote that in the unsettling wake of a linguistic analysis of some of even my simplest writing that rated it as too complex in its syntax to appeal to most readers, I was feeling very disheartened at the prospect of being able to turn even the one thing I thought I was pretty good at into a profitable activity.

Well, I discovered something today that gave me a little hope. I read a New York Times column by Ross Douthat that scored even higher on unreadibility than my writings did when I subjected it to the same online analysis. And I honestly believe that my writings are clearer and, arguably, better stylistically at least. So, if Ross Douthat can write a regular column for one of the world's most respected newspapers with a style possibly even more opaque than mine, maybe there's a smidgen of hope for me after all.

And to place an exclamation point on that hope, I submitted an aforementioned Op Ed piece to a newspaper this morning. I spent a couple of weeks writing and polishing it meticulously until I could see no additions, subtractions, or corrections to make with it, and then I pulled the trigger and sent it.

All I can say is that getting that piece published in such a prestigious medium would be the crowning achievement of my writing hobby thus far, and perhaps the doorway to writing as more than just a hobby. I won't hold my breath waiting to receive word that my piece is being considered or has been approved for publication. I'm realistic enough to know that the odds are very much against it. But I still have a shred of hope in me. We shall see what happens.

Midnight Musings

I'm usually in bed this late. But this hasn't been a usual day. As I posted previously, I'm feeling lost. I thought I was a good writer. I hoped to spend my remaining years writing professionally. But now I don't think I'm very good. And I doubt that I'll ever be good enough. And if I won't, where does that leave me? What should I do?

I say to myself that the test I took yesterday doesn't tell the whole story. That my writing is special. Yes, I tend to write big words and long, complex sentences that inflate my "reading difficulty" scores. But I do it in a way that is much clearer and easier to understand than those scores suggest.

I tell myself this, and I believe it. A little bit. But not enough to feel much comfort or hope.

I need to go to bed. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow with a clearer head and more hope and determination to pursue my dream of being a writer no matter what.

When I say this, I think of those contestants on American Idol who thought they were the bee's knees as singers. They seemed to believe that they were headed for superstardom. Or that they would at least have a decent paying singing career. And, yet, as soon as they opened their mouths, it was obvious that they were mediocre at best or awful at worst. There was no way they'd ever earn a dime singing. Yet, even as they were firmly ushered out the door, they said they'd be back and that, next time, they'd succeed.

Am I like them?

Overhauling My Writing Style

I’ve been shaken to my core this afternoon. It began with my reading an article by a journalist named Shane Snow about how the best writing is as simple as possible without oversimplifying. Then I made the mistake of using an online utility to analyze a piece I was hoping to get published in a major newspaper. I thought I’d managed to craft a pretty good Op Ed article that had a decent chance of making the grade.

Yet, the resulting analysis all but destroyed that hope. By every widely accepted measure of the complexity of a document’s language, my document scored outrageously far above the parameters that Snow recommends in his article. I reeled in despair.

But I didn’t stop there. I took several posts from this blog that I thought featured some of my simplest, clearest, and best writing and subjected it to the same analysis. And the complexity scores weren’t much lower than they were for the newspaper piece I’ve been working on.

I’ve prided myself on my writing ever since I was a kid. In fact, writing is about the only thing I’ve thought I do reasonably well. Almost everything else has been an uncommon struggle for me. But at least I believed I could write better than most people. Maybe even well enough to earn some money from it. But if Snow’s article is correct, I can hardly expect to earn a living writing any more than I could from repairing cars.

Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There’s no way my NLD could allow me to be an auto mechanic. But perhaps I’m fluent enough in English that I could learn to write more simply and clearly than I do now. Maybe then people would want to read what I write and even pay for the privilege. Yet, it looks like I’ll need to radically overhaul my writing style to have any chance of that, and I don’t know if I’m up to it.

There is an old story about Sonny Rollins that gives me some hope. Sonny Rollins recorded some of the most celebrated saxophone music ever in the 1950’s, but he was unhappy with his own playing. And so he stopped recording and performing in public and retreated to a bridge where he played only to himself for a couple of years until he had reinvented his approach. Only then did he reappear in the music world and go on to continue building his legacy as a “saxophone colossus.”

Of course, Sonny Rollins was tremendously successful before he did that, whereas I’m a nobody in the writing world. And Rollins had immense musical talent with which to effect his transformation while my writing talent is a giant question mark.

I think or thought I write well, and others have told me I do. But some have also told me I should write more simply and clearly so I’m easier to understand. And now I have an objective analysis that backs them up. Moreover, even if I can make my style more readable and appealing, do I have anything to say that people want to read about?

I worry that if I change my writing as much as it looks like I need to, I’ll lose my unique voice and any appeal I might have as an author worth reading about anything. And I don’t know what to do about this. I grant that if I’m too wordy and “sophisticated” now, few people will want to read me and that nobody will probably pay to do it. But if I don’t stand out in a good way, how will I attract any more readers than I do now? And how can I stand out if I stop writing in a way that comes as naturally as my previous writing has? I haven’t a clue. I feel hopeless except for the hope that “this too shall pass.” And in the meantime, I’m going to keep refining and eventually submit that article I’ve been working on and see what happens. What's more, I’m publishing this blogpost which I’ve tried to make as simple and clear as I can without overdoing it. What do you think of it?

It's That Time Again

Another year has flown by and another "special day" greets me this morning.

I don't know how I've made it this far or how much further I'll be able to go. I say "I'll be able" rather than "have to" because I still want to keep going. You might wonder why considering that all my dreams now seem to end with the morning sun and my goals entail little more than getting through the day.

Gone are my hopes of writing my magnum opus on religion, free will, or anything else. I've come to the provisional conclusion that I have nothing to say that's worth saying and that people these days won't even read the words of those who do. Gone are my hopes of becoming the person I want to be. There's just too large a gulf between that person and the person I am and have always been.

No, today I live to love my wife, my cats, my family, and my friends. I live to enjoy the things I still can and to contribute what little I can to the enjoyment of others. That's it.

Do I sound depressed? I don't feel depressed. In fact, when I got up this morning and started seeing and replying to all the nice people wishing me Happy Birthday on Facebook, I felt happy. I still do. I'm blessed to have so many friends and acquaintances who care enough to send me birthday wishes. I've known some of them for over fifty years, and I feel a special sense of warmth and connection when I hear from one of them.

So, no, I'm not depressed. Just being realistic about who I am and what is left for me to do with a wasted life that's running out of time.

Yet, having said that, my mind is filled with things I could write even if nobody wants to read them. So maybe I was wrong to suggest that I don't even care to try. And if I were to try, just try, regardless of the result, maybe that would go a long way to bridging the aforementioned "gulf" between who I am and who I want to be.

Let's see what happens this year.

On Writing Better

I seldom post to this blog anymore, but I've started rereading William Zinsser's wonderful book titled "On Writing Well," and I feel inspired to write and challenged to write well. Of course, I've always wanted to believe that I write well already and needn't work harder to write better, but I've always known on one level or other that there's room for improvement.

Zinsser writes: "Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon." Well, that seems to describe my writing when I examine my words under the magnifying glass. I've always woven superfluous and pretentiously big words into ornate sentences that surely tax the patience of even the most attentive readers and send the rest scurrying for cover.

Yet I struggle with the question of how to streamline my writing in a way that improves it rather than robs it of my unique and vital voice. I long to write clearly and simply, but I don't want to repel readers with prose that sounds like Dr. Seuss wrote it and they stop reading not because my writing's too daunting in its turbid complexity but because it's too boring in its spare and sterile simplicity.

Well, Zinsser makes one thing clear at the outset. Writing is difficult work. If it ever seems easy, it's probably because I'm doing it wrong. But I still have to figure out how to do it right, and I'm hoping that reading Zinsser's book and practicing what it preaches will help me.

However, I need to remember that when we try to do something differently that we already do pretty well, we may do it worse before we learn how to do it better and that we need to hang in there with the effort and the frustration.