So shut up and write!

A number of years ago I opened a blog, under a title similar to this one, and entered one brief paragraph and a question for readers about a movie popular at the time. As soon as I wrote it, I knew there was no reason in the world why anyone would ever navigate their way to that lonely page in cyberspace, or would care about the innocuous little contribution to the aural traffic jam of opinion and argument and noisemaking that is modern discourse. The futility of the enterprise seemed demeaning and a little pathetic, so I dropped it.   

It is still out there, like a tiny blinking star in cyberspace. If there is a way to remove it or obliterate it, I do not know the way. And so I can imagine it living on¸ to be found years later,  like some archeological artifact—a shard or object of household debris—indicative of thwarted intentions in the age of the Internet, or of the loneliness and desiccation of society (why wasn’t this writer out bowling with his family or friends?).  Or of something. Or nothing.

But here I am giving it another try.  My motives are different, or so I am pretending. Of course I want to be read, but I expect not to be and don’t care. That, anyway, is the pretense. To write about what I care about, and to do it as well as I can as if it were being read (because after all, it might—just might—actually attract a reader somewhere), but at the same time as if the opinion of others did not matter (because after all it is very likely never to be read by anyone, ever)—this is a premise upon which a blog can be written. And if it moves me to actually write every day, it can be sustained and will be its own reward regardless of whether I have readers. Writers are people who write. So write goddamn it.