I was asked a provocative question last week.
"How do you find the time to do a blog?"
It
was provocative because it had been a week since I made an entry.
Sorry. I was actually feeling a little antsy because I hadn't written
anything. Blogs are habitual. But put last week aside for a moment, I'll
get around to how that fits in with this narrative. The answer to her
question is that I don't 'find' the time. It's not laying around
somewhere, I make the time because 
of Maslow. Maslow's
Hierarchy of Need is a well known and well respected actualization
model. It attempts to define why we do things, what our motivations are
and how they rank. People gotta eat. Gene Kelly said, 'Gotta dance!' I
gotta write this crap. And, yes, writing this blog is a little less critical than excretion, but barely.
When
I tried to categorize this 'need', I found it spanned all the top four
segments. I wrote a little while ago about details of some jobs I had
when I was younger. This information may be critically important to
someone. . . somewhere. . . sometime.
For example, my father
worked for a company called the White Company in Baltimore when he was
young. What did he do there? Was it his first job? How old was he? Was
he a truck driver, or was this where he was introduced to auto and truck
mechanics which he did all the rest of 
his
life? I'm pretty certain the White Company wasn't some sort of front
for a racist organization because apparently, they started out making
sewing machines. That's pretty innocuous.
But I can't find out
any of this information (yet) because my father didn't keep a blog. So, I
won't make that same mistake. As a result, I take a couple of hours and
write stuff and insert some spiffy images so people will have something
interesting to look at when they get bored and that's practically a
certainty.
But why is it so strangely important to me all of a
sudden? Well, a symptom of the answer was what kept me from blogging
last week.
I run a data center for a company that does data
processing for hospitals. That's like the perfect storm of criticality.
Computer work itself is important but when you're doing it for
hospitals - Oh. . . My. . . GOD! - it doesn't really get much more
critical. But it's actually OK, because we're the best in the business
and have been doing it longer than everyone else put together. So we
have processes and structure and documentation and we're well motivated.
But we still have the occasional sixteen hour day 
like last week. And it's nothing like it was years ago when that was more normal for me than I like to remember.
And I know there are doctors and nurses out there laughing, 'Only
sixteen hours? Ha Ha Haaaa!' Hey, talk to me in thirty years. I also put
in my three days straight without sleep more than once and have the
burst blood vessels in my eyes to prove it.
But the event
reminded me that I'd better be writing this stuff down if that's what I
want to do. For a vast collection of things, my brother and I are the
only ones who have any actual memory. That worries me a lot because my
brother has lost almost all of his memory and most of his mind as well.
I
mean, who's going to tell the hilarious story of when we were having a
bonfire on 118th. Terrace and someone threw in a closed fingernail
polish bottle. Of course it exploded and the shards of glass hit the
person standing closest to the fire, that would be me, right in the
face. Ha ha, good times. Three of the pieces hit within millimeters of
my left eye (my left eye again!) at 2 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock.
Three near misses, all around the eye! So I run into the house with my
face covered in blood, screaming my head off. Boy, that must have been
something for a parent to see, huh? It's a shame they didn't have video
cameras in those days, that would be great stuff to show at parties and
reunions.
The part I remember clearest is walking to North Miami a
few times to see the doctor. Mom never learned to drive and there was
only one car anyway. Plus, we were down at the end of a dead-end road
and the idea of taking a taxi was in about the same league as taking a
rocket ship. So, we walked. I remember it was fun taking the walks.
So, I have made a decision to write things down. My brother and I are the carriers of this baton and we're not carrying it alone. So, there.
That's me grabbing at my brother's trike. In the writing business, that's called foreshadowing.
I haven't lost my mind, I just misplaced it for a little while!
February 16, 2009 at 1:02 AM
I can't help but think about...as I see you as a little baby squinting in the tropical noon-day sun of Miami.....that no one suffered from vitamin-D deficiency the way we do now huh?
February 17, 2009 at 12:56 PM
That's true, and I'm willing to bet BIG MONEY that I didn't have a bit of sunscreen on either.
February 17, 2009 at 5:39 PM