In the beginning

A few weeks ago, a friend of a friend of mine (on Friendster, of course) sent me a message out of the blue. Since then, she and I have been sending emails back and forth a third of the way around the world. Great, you say? Been there, done that? Yeah, well so have I, but it's been a while.

The whole thing calls to mind the years I spent exchanging letters (you know: paper, ink, envelope, stamps, waiting) with a friend in France. I suppose some might say she and I could not have been friends, real friends, at any rate. After all, we met when she got my name from a hotel clerk in Greece and swept me through the town so she and about two dozen other French kids (many were under 10) could practice their English. Still, as I sat down on the bus to head back to the airport, she came rapping on the window, address in hand. After two years I wrote her, and for years we exchanged letters, writing perhaps twelve or thirteen each way in a year. In some ways I know her better than many people I have met and spent time with in person, so I say she is my friend. But that's not what this is about.

I was writing my friend (the new one I mentioned in the first paragraph) an email not long ago, and I found myself going on about what was missing. My wife and I, despite periodic disagreements, are happily married. My wife is working on an advanced degree, and I am looking at breaking into full-time teaching, having paid my dues as an adjunct. Still, for years now—more years than Sunshine and I have been married—I have had something bothering me.

No, it has not been there every day or even every week. Nonetheless, it has been there, and it persists in being there at the most inconvenient times, namely whenever it chooses to return: I need to produce something. Now, before you cheer at my decision to blog, know that this is not what I need. In this latest email, you know, the one that made me start this thing, I prattled on for some while about what it might be that I need to produce. Do I need to write articles and other scholarly pieces? Short stories? Poems? Do I need to publish what I have been sitting on? Perhaps I need to market my board game (but who, short of Go players, really likes pure tactics these days?) until I actually sell it to a manufacturer.

I have no illusions; this blog will not resolve my troubles. If I am lucky, however, it may help me find the right spot to scratch, and that would be enough. Maybe, if all goes well, I will even accumulate a reader or two—people not driven off by a style many might find dry. Stay. Tell me what you think. Scratch a little, even, if you think you know where my itch might be.