New Year's Resolutions

I’m not good at making New Year’s resolutions, mostly because I am so undisciplined that I know before I ever put pen to paper I won’t be completing them. (“Pen to paper”? More like digital dots to a screen.) But I’m going to make an exception this year: I hereby resolve to do these blogs more often. Once a week? I’m not sure I that have much to say, but I want to at least try. I see that my last blog was posted September 5: “The Sounds of the City.” Four months? Good grief. Anyone who knows me knows I have much more to say that one blog every four months. Hell, most people can’t get me to shut up. So, blogging along . . .

Now, the problem comes up: what to blog about. Since this is a general blog, I can go anywhere. By general I mean I can write about anything that captures my fancy. Even more reason to plow ahead: no restrictions. But in a way, that’s the problem. I have too many choices, so, I end up not making a decision. What’s that line from Into the Woods? “I know what my decision is, / Which is not to decide.” That’s sung by Cinderella who ends up with the prince. If you’ve seen the show, you know how badly that turned out.

Another reason not to blog is, well, there’s no getting around the fact that thundering hoards are not out there clamoring for my blogs. I sometimes wonder if anyone out there is even mildly interested. I tell myself that I do it for my own benefit, a kind of autobiography (I love the smell of rationalization in the morning). And reading back over some of these blogs, started in October of 2007, shortly after moving to Chicago, I see that they do, in fact, constitute a kind of autobiography. I’m never likely to write a regular autobiography (see the first sentence above), so these blogs get as close as I’m probably ever going to get. So I have a small audience; I have myself, which is really what this is all about.

So, onward and upward, with new resolution, new vigor, and not an idea in the world where to go next. I’ll think about it . . .