Who cares?
So I read about all these blogs and I get the impression that nearly every blog on the Internet catches someone's eye.
Hmm. Apparently not.
I guess the irony would be if I wrote something really interesting or personal I'd get tons of interest and lose my job.
Ah fuck that.

I recently read Loud and Clear by Anna Quindlan. I really like her stuff, I started reading her life in the '70s and even though I didn't have kids and career then I could relate to a lot of her stuff about feminism and then late family and work.
When she left a great job at the New York Times, she wrote about how everything thought she was crazy, I felt a little envy and a lot of admiration.
What balls, I thought. Of course in any great story, most of the boring detail is hacked away so only the good stuff is left.
Not taking away from her talent at all but not everyone has the same opportunities as she.
As a single parent, I found myself charged with putting food on the table and a roof over the floor. Ms. Quindlan had a husband to assume lion's share of the that burden. Not that I think raising children and keeping the house is not an important, albeit non-paying, job. But following your bliss is a lot easier when someone else is footing the bills.
And one essay in the book was clearly a commencement speech, the one that all speakers give about doing what you love.
Notice how losers never give commencement speeches? Or even just ho hum, run of the mill people; people who have little choice but to work, whether it's something they love or not.
anyway.
i hate those kinds of speeches. It's almost arrogant, condescending and out of touch with some strata of society.
okay, enough venting.

Walking the line - I had been thinking about creating a blog. I've got a new computer with lots of capacity and thought blogging would be a good way to pull me into the world of techno geeks and Internet hipsters all at the same time. (More on the mixed success of that effort later).

Around the time I was thinking about a blog, I picked up a copy of the University of Tennesseee's communications department publication and read about people getting fired because of their blogs.
both had posted job-related photos, one a flight attendant perched on the top of seats in a plane, showing a lot of leg but nothing really bad, and the other was a loading dock at a Microsoft plant, with pallets of Apple computers on it, with the comment that "everybody wants macs," or even Microsoft wants G-3s, or whatever.
but the "comments" from their employers were not very favorable.
So one friend strongly advised against a blog. I say I'll write about a beautiful rainbow I saw recently, leading another friend to predict a very boring blog no one will read.
Maybe she's right. But I bet there's tons of boring blogs out there, so what the heck. Even boring people crave validation.

I made my first entry and tried to send a link to some friends. They couldn't find it and I couldn't find it for a while.
I think I will keep this up, though. I'll follow the advise of one friend: never to blog after my seocnd beer.
Maybe someone will come up with a breathalyzer that will lock up the blog if the user blows over a pre-set BAC.
Cause, of course, that's one of the dangers of blogging. We feel a certain anonminity from the idea of the faceless, teeming world wide web and then add in some liquid courage and next thing you know, you've posted your pix of the boss with the janitor in the mail room or your, in your opinion, hilarious impression of the boss's eating manners or whatever and bam, there you go, out the blog.
Might be a more interesting blog after getting canned but J.C. Penney's and the gas company probably would fail to see the humor.

So July 2, 2006. My first blog entry, if I can figure out how to do it.
I decided to start a blog this year because I had several significant things happen to me.
I'm middle-aged (I'm in the 45 to 54 bracket and that's all I'm saying about that except to note that by calling myself middle-aged I'm assuming I'm going to live to well past 100).
Sometimes it seems like stuff happens to people or they have ephianies at mile stone birthdays, like 40 or 50.
but this year is an off year in that regard and I've had some changes happen to me that are leading to reflection and planning, (see blog) and a desire to have change that is caused by me.
After five years in a particular job position, I was unceremonously moved into another position.
Caught completely unaware, it happened on a Friday, the day before my birthday on Saturday.
So not only was I moving along in the age bracket, I was blindsided by work, left gasping like some pitiful goldfish whose tanked was kicked over.
I put a good face on it at work (I think) but I was feeling pretty sorry for myself that day when I left.
I didn't have anyone at home to commiserate with me and I wasn't ready to tell my family - my parents and my adult child. I needed some time so I could tell them without crying about it.
I was also having some health issues, which were bringing me down because I was like: Damn, I'm getting old and falling apart.
My blood pressure went out of whack and I had to wear a heart halter for a weekened.
just before that I had my first MRI on my knee and saw that if I had to have one on any other part of my body, I would have definintely had to be sedated to go into that tube.

but back to Friday. I left work and stopped at the Mr. Zip on the way home. It had been storming like hell all day.
But I went in and got my 24 oz (to freedom, sublime likes a 40, but I can't drink it before it gets to hot).
When I pulled out of the parking lot, I looked to my left and there in the sky was a perfect rainbow.
Unobscured by clouds, it went completely from one side of the river to the other, and showed all the colors in its range.
It was beautiful. If I had seen a perfect rainbow before, I don't recall.
People were stopping on the streets to look at it.
My daughter and her boyfriend stopped where they were, across town and my mom told me she saw it.
everybody talked about it.
It had to be a sign, though. It's been over a month since I saw it and I still haven't interpreted the sign. I'm still open to the meaning, maybe it will come in a dream or maybe something else will happen that will put it all in place.
but I've decided to become more computer literate, hence the blog, and I'm going to learn more about digitial photography, I have a camera and video camera and I'm going to start publishing photos and stories online.
I won't make money but I won't be rejected either. Maybe.