Wait, Wait...It'll Come to Me
I’m suffering a minor age crisis, triggered by this blog. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write, so I referred to a small text file where I keep essay ideas for just such a dry spell. I was about an hour into it before realizing I’d already used that idea, and failed to remove it from my to-do list.
So I thought a bit more, got another idea, and started again. A paragraph later, I got suspicious.
Thank heaven for archives. My suspicions were correct: I handled that idea already, too, albeit in 2005.
I want this page to be interesting, and I’ve learned from Dave Barry—whose work I once adored—that recycling the same topic doesn’t remain interesting for long. My memory is still functional, but it’s become merely normal, which feels like a big step down from my childhood, when I could remember long passages of text or dialogue just by paying attention. Obviously, I pay attention to my own writing, yet I can’t be certain any more even whether I’ve used a subject—not without “cheating” and looking back through the archives.
Blogging is largely an activity for the young. Old geezers passed the line where learning was easy and novelty was appealing for its own sake before the internet began coming into its own; for them, becoming net-familiar takes a deliberate effort. (Often I feel I was on the cusp at the time. I get how it works, but I sometimes wonder why it’s so choked with useless crud, and what the appeal of turning out all that crud is.) But apparently, blogging is an activity for the young for another reason: youth remembers better than I what remains to be said.
Or, possibly, doesn’t care whether it repeats itself. In light of conversations I’ve overheard at the mall, I’ll hang onto that hope.