Madam, He's Adam

I'm not sure what motivates people to blog. I've heard that the number of blogs grows by leaps and bounds each day. I don't follow any particular blog with any regularity these days, but some border on incomprehensibility.

My motivation is simply to write, and practice writing. I hope, over time, to get better at it, but it's much like getting better at chess by playing speed chess. There's probably something more to be learned by being deliberate about chess, studying its strategy, and then using that to help you play chess better under time constraints.

I read the writings of Tony Kornheiser (though not much, since he hardly writes for the Post anymore) and Michael Wilbon, the PTI guys, and Wilbon seems the far better writer, and even then, if I were to dig around and find the top sportswriters, I'd find someone, I'm sure more eloquent. Kornheiser is, for my money, far more interesting as a radio personality than as a writer, even if he claims writing is his first passion. As sportswriters, they've learned to write on short deadlines. Wilbon, in particular, might watch a game as it ends around midnight, and have to finish his column in the next half hour. At the very least, he can feel that sportswriters face deadlines much stricter than "real" news reporters.

I had therefore assumed that my buddy Adam would consider writing as a kind of passion, one that was swayed towards computers, when that became a more practical alternative, and eventually something that was given up due to RSI. I'm not sure why I drew that conclusion other than its tragic magnificence of it all. Was this a budding J.K. Rowling, but for the disgrace of God?

It may be, that in our society that crowns excellence as the be-all and end-all of life, that most people don't strive to make our hobbies into our lives. We may love music, but we don't seek to be musicians. We may love cooking, but we don't want to be cooks. There are things we enjoy in small amounts, and at a level that doesn't begin to approximate excellence. For most of us, realistically, it's too much to ask.

Not all of us are Caron Butler, who found prison, especially solitary confinement, to be an awakening moment, an epiphany, that made him reject his "friends" who ran afoul of the law. He could channel his passion to basketball instead of committing crimes that lead to numerous arrests as a teen. He completely turning around his life and it culminated in his selection as an all-star for the NBA All Star weekend.

Instead, we do what we can. We enjoy what we do, and really, it's generally good enough. I used live with another Adam, and he really liked to cook, but probably has few allusions or desires to be a professional cook.

For myself, I'd like to be a better writer, but I don't have any particular way to become better other than to write a lot. As I'm sure I've said before, a bit of criticism from those who write better would serve me well. In the meanwhile, I'm content to blog and be happy there is some means out there to let me write and publish for free.