The Reluctant Fisherman

It was the beginning of the end for me.

Most of us remember where we were on the morning of September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Myself, I was sitting in my office at the law firm where I worked, preparing for a hearing later that morning in bankruptcy court. It was one of several hearings I had over the next few days, and I was anxious about not having enough time to prepare for them. I had arrived early that morning, probably a little after six a.m., early enough to be the first person in the office.

As usual, I was working in silence. Maybe I had a CD playing; certainly not the radio or the televison.

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I’m sure you’ve heard by now that the University of Toronto conducted a study on Toronto teenagers, the results of which proved that electronic messaging devices like Instant Messenger do not erode the grammar skills of teenagers and may, in fact, improve them. (You can read more at the University of Toronto’s website.) While this seems to be breaking news across the nation, it comes as no great surprise to me. What does surprise me is how many people, having lived through similar experiences, have forgotten then so quickly.

Paraphrasing Santana (the philosopher, not the rock star): don’t learn history and you’ll repeat it within your lifetime.

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My church regularly sponsors a summer camp for teenage girls. The purpose of this camp is to inspire young women to think about good choices and to recognize their value as young women. For most girls, this camp is a positive experience, an opportunity to stay up all night with friends and do whatever girls do when they get together outside of the eyesight and arms’ reach of their parents. It’s fun to see these girls come back from camp, faces graced with sly smiles and eyes speaking of secret fun known only to one another.

Yes, Girls’ Camp is usually a good thing. But not always.

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The heat wave broke last night.

Today is the first day in two weeks that the air conditioner hasn’t run for most of the day. My windows are open; the air outside is cool and invigorating. The season feels more like early fall than mid-summer. It’s a wonderful day.

In fact, it would be a perfect day if it wasn’t for her.

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Today was the first day. I finally decided to loose the twenty or thirty extra pounds I’ve been carrying around for the past, oh, three years or so. The plan? Walking, then running, then weight lifting. No pain, no gain. And today was the first day.

I dug the running shoes out from beneath the bed, I stretched the long neglected muscles in my calves, I did a few calisthenics. Then I opened the front door.

It was raining.

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I’ve not written a significant word since April. Since I don’t have a good excuse, I won’t embarrass myself and bore you by making up a bad one.

This year, 2006, is almost half over.

A daydream haunts me. In this dream, I’m older, by a decade or more, sitting on the couch in someone’s living room, drinking something enjoyable and explaining how a lot of great authors didn’t actual start writing or publishing until they were older, even in their fifties or sixties. I’m talking about Frank McCourt and Karen Blixen, and going on and on and on about my writing and my philosophies and how someday soon, real soon, I’m going to write something important.
That someone in the room with me—who he or she is, I suppose, isn’t important—just sits across from me in a comfortable chair, listening to me with the dead-eyed gaze of the terminally bored, saying over and over, “Yeah, that’s it, buddy. Keep that dream alive.”

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I know what you’re thinking. “The Reluctant Fisherman? You should call this The Reluctant Writer!”

Well, I’ve been busy lately. Okay, that’s not exactly true. I say this because an honest answer would be a bit difficult to explain. But, to quote Bogart, “I’ll try once and we’ll leave it at that.”
You see, in the beginning there are words and they sound so much better in your head than they appear on paper. In your head, they’re like characters from a Gershwin musical, they’ve got rhythm, they’ve got style. They clean up the dance floor with their coolness.

But try to put them on paper and suddenly they’re as nervous as a group of teenagers at their first prom.

It’s the difference between vision and execution.

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It was Rachel’s idea and while most of her ideas are good, I balked at this one. After all, The Blog Herald proclaimed there were already over 100 million blogs on the world wide web as of October, 2005.

One hundred million. That’s more of anything than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.
With those kind of numbers staring me in the face, one question that begged itself quite loudly (seriously, it practically screamed from my mind) was this:

Does the world really need another blog? And another writer’s blog, at that?

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