Happy Birthday to "Black and White"

Sound the trumpets for One Year of Blogging!

        Forgive me for being self-indulgent, here, but I have to take a moment to note that I have now been blogging for one year.  Sometimes I look forward and try to imagine whether or not I'll still be doing this in another year, or two, or ten… Undoubtedly I'll stop some time!  But for now I'm still having fun coming up with interesting art and fiction topics, researching them, writing my little mini-essays, and reading any comments with which you're kind enough to respond.

        I said I was being self-indulgent in this post, but of course the very nature of blogging is basically self-indulgent.  Before I began this project, I was rather anti-blog, and in some ways I still am, because I don't believe that my every thought is important enough to share with the rest of the world.  I'm somewhat disturbed by the fact that so many people seem to believe that their every personal detail does belong in the face of the public.  (As a bit of an introvert, I'm not sure how I feel about putting my personal thoughts out onto the world stage where, despite the fact that not too many people ever do actually see them, millions of people could.)  On the other hand, I love that people from all around the world who would never have any other contact with each other can now share ideas about the things that excite them.  So I continue to think of this blog as a conversation (admittedly terribly one-sided!) with like-minded people (and possibly a few proverbial dogs) out there in the ether.  What I like about blogging is the idea of reaching out and trying to make a few connections.

        That's really what the fiction-writing is all about, too, when it comes right down to it.  It's about taking something deeply personal and putting it out into the world for others to see, in the hope of making a connection.  In both writing and art there's the possibility of spinning a thread from deep inside the creator, out into the world, and back into another heart on the other end.  That's why I do what I do.

        

[Picture: Trumpet, rubber block print by AEGN, 2009 (sold out).]