So it’s been a while. Life goes on. I’ve experienced a change in attitude regarding the type of things that I’ve been posting on my humble little blog here. Since my last post, I have written or started to write probably about ten posts. Each time I gave up in despair because I would inevitably realize that nobody cares what I have to say about politics, ethics, social issues, philosophy, or really anything. I have been spending a lot more time participating in the comment sections at NPR.org, which has scratched my social commentary itch as well as demonstrated to me that the vast majority of people aren’t really interested in the open-minded exchange of ideas. They log on to the internet in order to shout, demean, belittle, disparage, and occasionally crack wise. Arguments are carried out with ironclad preconceptions and any contrary evidence is ignored, mocked, or summarily discounted. Advocates debate like Greek phalanxes, advancing in close-order, engaging shield-to-shield, shoving against one another until exhaustion, and then quitting the field with relatively few casualties and no ground gained. This is not the intellectually fertile soil I had naively expected when I started this blog. And so I arrive, in my typical meandering fashion, at the main idea of this post.
I realized about five years ago that, strange as it sounds, I felt compelled to write fiction. I’ve always been a lover of great literature, but never wanted to "be a writer". It seems like such a cliché, and a pretentious, attention-seeking label. The problem is, I’ve got these stories banging around in my head, begging to be made real. There are scores of incorporeal characters and settings in my mind, submerging into the foundry of ideas that is my subconscious, and periodically surfacing to remind me that they don’t exist until I write them down. I don’t have much desire to share these stories with anyone, although I would be disingenuous if I denied the appeal of earning my income by writing. So anyway, I think I’ll exercise my writing chops here on the Open Mind Exchange, just in order to get some of these ideas out, practice my craft, and see if there is any talent there.
So from now on, expect to see more short stories, serialized longer stories, and assorted works of original fiction here. I would also like to use this space to share the deeper, darker, and more intensely personal thoughts I have, but since I have not used a pseudonym here I don’t feel comfortable doing that. If there’s anybody actually reading this, I would appreciate your feedback. Of course, I reserve the right to occasionally fire off an essay addressing current events, lucid dreaming, the phenomenon of consciousness or whatever.
