Saturday, October 08, 2005
Why I write
A few years ago I retired from my career as a performance storyteller and started a new life of travelling and living in south-east Asia. Two things that are important to me are friends and communication. In fact for me the two go together. To keep my friends informed of what was happening in my life I did two things: I kept a website and I wrote regular emails. I felt that between the two a record was being made of anything interesting happening in my life. One day one of my friends emailed me and said 'I hope you're keeping a diary of all your adventures.'
No, I wasn't. I thought all those emails were a form of diary. Don't you keep them on file?
But not everyone saves every email and files get lost. My own files had disappeared twice with a stolen computer and crashed hard drive. Among all my friends perhaps there were bits and pieces of a collection of my 'adventures' but nowhere was there a complete record.
After that I added a blog page to the above website. It included my 'adventures' and also anything else that was on my mind. I had kept a regular journal over a period of 15 years so writing comes fairly easily to me. It has also become a way for me to work through issues that confront me.
When that website reached capacity I had to ask myself should I delete old pages and replace them with new ones. I decided rather, to keep my blog on an external website. That blog has for some time now been kept at Spymac. About a month ago Spymac embarked on a process of reinventing itself. On the last day of August they announced that the new Spymac would be launched on the first of September. Here it is October and we are still waiting for most of the features to reappear. I have no complaints about Spymac. It is a free service and you get what you pay for. Perhaps if you go there you will soon be able to read some of my recent blogs.
I've decided not to wait any longer for them to get their act together. I have a need to express myself. I've started my blog again here.
Apart from writing to keep my friends informed and keeping a record of my 'adventures' I see my blog as my way of making sense of the world. It is not my goal to change the world. I have more questions than answers. Change is one of the conditions of existence. It is going to happen anyway. Whether the world changes for better or worse depends, I believe, on our motivation.
The conditions of existence also include suffering and unsatisfactoriness. If we are to reduce these then our motivation for change must always be for the greater good rather than self interest. Unfortunately much of the motivation I am seeing in the world is for the latter reason.
If through reading my blog one or two people are motivated to rethink their goals perhaps that is a good thing. However I offer no easy answers. I don't believe there are any.
No, I wasn't. I thought all those emails were a form of diary. Don't you keep them on file?
But not everyone saves every email and files get lost. My own files had disappeared twice with a stolen computer and crashed hard drive. Among all my friends perhaps there were bits and pieces of a collection of my 'adventures' but nowhere was there a complete record.
After that I added a blog page to the above website. It included my 'adventures' and also anything else that was on my mind. I had kept a regular journal over a period of 15 years so writing comes fairly easily to me. It has also become a way for me to work through issues that confront me.
When that website reached capacity I had to ask myself should I delete old pages and replace them with new ones. I decided rather, to keep my blog on an external website. That blog has for some time now been kept at Spymac. About a month ago Spymac embarked on a process of reinventing itself. On the last day of August they announced that the new Spymac would be launched on the first of September. Here it is October and we are still waiting for most of the features to reappear. I have no complaints about Spymac. It is a free service and you get what you pay for. Perhaps if you go there you will soon be able to read some of my recent blogs.
I've decided not to wait any longer for them to get their act together. I have a need to express myself. I've started my blog again here.
Apart from writing to keep my friends informed and keeping a record of my 'adventures' I see my blog as my way of making sense of the world. It is not my goal to change the world. I have more questions than answers. Change is one of the conditions of existence. It is going to happen anyway. Whether the world changes for better or worse depends, I believe, on our motivation.
The conditions of existence also include suffering and unsatisfactoriness. If we are to reduce these then our motivation for change must always be for the greater good rather than self interest. Unfortunately much of the motivation I am seeing in the world is for the latter reason.
If through reading my blog one or two people are motivated to rethink their goals perhaps that is a good thing. However I offer no easy answers. I don't believe there are any.
