Roots and Chords

Introduction to the short blog category

Yesterday was the day I finally posted my first blog!  It surprised me how excited I felt about it.  Even in this place of feeling so uncertain about both what lies ahead for me and my family and how I feel about it all, I now have a sense that there is some forward direction, or at least my energy has a little more purpose to it!

When I first thought of taking on this writing project, I was afraid I would not have enough to say.  Having gotten even just this far into it, I am reminded of when I first began to teach music classes.  I was afraid I would not be able to fill a two-hour time slot, so I would start by introducing myself and explaining in detail what we were going to cover and then go into more detail over the content, until suddenly we had five minutes left and I hadn’t covered anywhere near what I had hoped!  As it turns out, having enough to say has never been a problem for me in actuality, only in the mired and complicated neighborhood of my thinking mind.  So one comment I received yesterday pointed out politely that I do not have to offer such long posts.

Since I have this compulsive desire to please everybody, even if Lincoln in his wisdom stated that this is an unreachable goal (was it Lincoln?  I also have a compulsive desire to not make too many mistakes) I found myself with conflicting desires.  I will confess to you that I have already written a few blog entries, stored in My Documents, and they range from long to longer.  And I like them and will want to post them.  On the other hand, I do not wish to scare off any of you who do not have the endless time it will take to read what I post!

Amazingly I did not agonize over this quandary.   (Amazing, because I also have a general desire to have figured out the solution to everything already, or at least immediately.)  I first considered breaking them up and spreading them out over several days, and got a little stuck trying to figure out exactly how to make that work, so I tabled the thought.   And then happily the answer came to me in a flash.  I will post some short blog entries (this is one example) and some long ones.  And you get to choose which to look at. 

This also took care of one blog detail that Dan and I had left hanging when I registered my blog site.  The WordPress structure allows me – in fact, seems to be demanding me – to indicate a category for each post.  This was eluding me, since I had not thought of compartments into which various writings could be filed.  But now I have two categories:  “short” and “long”, which will make it pretty easy for you to make your big Roots and Chords decision whenever there is an announcement of a new post.  If you subscribed.  (That was not a suggestion, just a point of clarification, meaning that you will only receive an announcement if you sign up.)

Many thanks to all of you who took the time to read yesterday’s post.  My intent is to put up three or four per week, which I hope will feel workable for me and readable for you.  But who knows?  I might have too much to say to limit it to that.  As Chloe used to say when she was three years old, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”  Wise words.  So for now, I will say good night!