Is It Really Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away?

As this blog approaches its tenth year anniversary—hard to believe, that—I have to ask if this blogger is approaching his burn out point.

I've let WoW fade away since that last burst of analytic anger about the colossal clusterfuck of our last presidential election.

I feel so helpless. So right yet so unheeded. (Did you even read what I wrote?)

People suck. They're stupid. Easily gulled. Fools, all. Why cast my pearls of wisdom before such swine?

Especially if no one is listening.

What? A record for posterity? Ha! I laugh at my own pretension.

Maybe Twitter has ruined me for long form observation and reasoning. It's so immediately gratifying.

Maybe it's ruined us all. (Threaders notwithstanding).

My second novel—in draft—is now finished. It's completely different than the first.

No one will buy it. I'm not a salesman. Not a Trump.

The first is a deep dive into the soul of a modern man, displaced and disintegrating. The drama is mostly internal.

The second is about the rise to the mainstream from the underground of the late 20th Century of what we now call the alt-right.

(1) => Psychology/spirituality. (2) =>Politicality/sociality.

(The next shoots for Universality/allegoricality. But that's another story. (Haha. Pun.).).

Much of my energies, I admit, were invested in the last push to finish the second book.

And, literally, the minute I typed "THE END", I opened another document file on my iMac and began novel #3.

It has achieved a certain momentum.

That tripled with my dismay at the foolishness of this country's politics and the seductive allure of Twitter has taken my attention away from you all in blogland.

Apologies to those listed and updating in the righthand column here. If I've not been clicking through to your posts, adding to your daily totals, it's on me. Not you.

All that being said, the future of this enterprise at WoW remains uncertain.

The Utter Failure of This Enterprise

If you've been checking in (here or your Reader), you will have noticed WoW has been AWOL since July. For not explaining my absence, I apologize.

My time away has afforded me a chance to reflect on life and blogging and the blogging life. Call it: Reculer pour mieux sauter.

WoW is closing in on its fifth anniversary. Five years I've been spewing this crap! WOW! And in that time I've attracted close to a dozen readers. Thanks and greetings to all of you.

Looking back, I see that the nature of my posting has changed over the years. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. I've lost sight of my original purpose. I've been too caught up in the noise and paid too little attention to the signal.

This is the dawning, still (I believe), of the Information Age. Despite all our advances from, say, ENIAC to, say, iPhone 5, as a civilization we are just getting our feet wet in this new era. We are the early adopters, the pioneers. Our kids and grandkids, etc., will look back at us and think how primitive all this stuff—computers, internet—seems to them. Kinda' the way we look back at AM radio or even telegraph today.

To repeat, I've been awash in all the information, call it the knowledge, so newly readily available to us all and lost sight of the Wisdom, or understanding, there to be gained.

(Really, I did have a vision for this joint. Just go back and read some of those early posts.)

So. Going forward, I'm going to try to refocus. Repurpose. To reclaim that original vision. To be worthy of my Russellian title.

Best,
Jim H.

P.S. To all my blog buddies out there: Not only have I been neglecting my blog, I've been neglecting yours as well. I haven't forgotten you. I've just needed some time away from the 'Net noise. Some silence, if you will. I hope to reappear soon—ready or not, for good or ill—in your Comments. Forewarned, etc., etc.

'Tis the Season

Wisdom of the West is celebrating its fourth anniversary!

My little hobby started out great guns with this mission statement: 

"For the past few years I have been writing a book with the title of this blog. Its subjects include such things as first principles, faith vs. reason, life on earth, meaning, communication, love, work, diversity, controversy, knowledge, time, change, power, law, freedom, technology, history, property, economics and markets, the environment, war and peace, religion, and government. I will post my thoughts on these and many other topics in the hope of engaging you, the readers here, in a dialogue about what wisdom our Western civilization is contributing to the great project of humankind here on planet Earth."

And I've been poking away at pretty much that very thing—being all over the place—for four years now. My first year, with all the enthusiasm of the nube/rube, I managed well over 200 posts. Since then I've fallen into a rhythm averaging about half that, like 2+ posts per week. Some weeks I might post 5 times and others none. I've put up some 555 posts in that time

My earliest posts were mostly text + pics (gleaned from the 'net). In recent months, I've taken to posting music videos and compiling linkage. That is to say, there has been less original writing and more entertainment and aggregation—though I do try to make my vids and links topically meaningful. And lately I've taken to posting pictures I've taken: pseudo-photo essays, if you will. One reason for this change is I've been more active writing fiction and trying to get my stories and novel published—however unsuccessfully—and I've been running more (more about that in a subsequent post). And that's okay from my point of view, but it may detract from your experience. For that, I appreciate your continued readership.

Some highlights from over the years (I can't believe I can actually say that) include: my 16-part serial post about my abject chickenshit failure to skydive entitled Thyraphobia, or Purity of Heart is to Fear One Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Not Do Again and my Ur-Story series, being a substantive analysis of a number of literary works from my own perspective as a writer. If you're interested, all my serial posts can be found under the heading "Pages" on the right side. Specific titles are itemized within the "Jim's Book Club" label. I've even posted the first five chapters of my novel "EULOGY", labeled as such. As always, you should read from the bottom. [FYI: Comments on any earlier posts (including critiques of my writing) still arrive in my designated email account, so don't be shy. I shall respond, but you'll have to check back.]

I have no plans, at present, to discontinue this little blog o' mine. Though changes may be in the offing. That being said, I do not intend to change the Rembrandt background: "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer." The artist portraying the philosopher contemplating the epic poet: there's something evocative about that for me.

And I hope to keep contact with all those of you who pop in from time to time to read and comment. Making cyberbuddies has been one of the unexpected pleasures of this little pasttime. Thanks.

Finally, in case you missed it the first time, I wanted to re-post this amazing video from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Ostensibly, it is Movements 7 and 8 of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. But it is more. I urge you to watch it to the end of Part 2—and, no, this has nothing to do with the closing of the Mayan cyclical calendar later this year. It's one of the best things I've found in the vast vastness of the information super-highway. It is a thing of sheer beauty. Enjoy: