I heard the bells coming from a few different places and shook my head.
“Once I was important to you.”
Notebooks aren’t supposed to speak but the strange and unusual finds me or maybe I find them, can’t say for certain.
It is a chicken and egg type question, who knows who came first.
Still I looked at the notebook and remembered when I carried it everywhere and gave it to the kind of attention you give to a first love or a child.
Stared at it and remembered when I couldn’t get enough and wondered when things changed and if they have changed forever.
Hard to say because there have been other moments punctuated by similar thoughts of ‘maybe this it’ followed by something that determined the end hadn’t yet arrived.
Got a follow up visit with a doc coming and am starting to make a few notes about things I want to inquire about.
Thought again about how this would have been another one of those moments where I would have asked Dad about some of his experiences.
He might not have remembered and told me the 25 years difference in age played a role and I would have shrugged my shoulders and said ok.
Or maybe he would have said XYZ happened and this is what went on afterwards and maybe that would have been helpful.
Can’t say for certain because my genetic make up isn’t solely him so some things are clearly different and maybe more would have been, but I would have liked to have been able to ask.
Told my son a couple of things and he asked why I would share it and I said it is because I am the patriarch.
Sounds kind of silly because I am not that old but there are no older men than I am in this branch.
No grandfathers, fathers or uncles and certainly no great-grandfathers.
All I have are stories and recollections of things I have vague memories of hearing about and who knows if they are relevant, helpful and or useful.
If the goal is to tell a tale, well then maybe they are because I can take that information and weave a yarn worth hearing or so I think.
Noticed the number of readers here has started to increase again but they seem to be new people and many of the old seem to have gone away or become irregular visitors.
That is the nature of blogging. You catch some people and they ride your blogging bus with you for countless miles and then they find a stop and leave.
Sometimes they come back again and sometimes they are simply gone.
Without real engagement you never know if they got busy, bored or both.
Maybe you told all the tales you could tell that would hold their interest. Posts need to educational, informative and or entertaining.
Hit all three and they’ll stick around for quite some time. Touch two consistently and you’ll still capture them for a bit.
But one or less leads to a parting of the ways and that is just how it is.
Hell maybe Lightfoot’s comment about being “ghost you can’t see” fits better than we sometimes like.
Might not, hard to make assumptions when so much is subjective and or based upon guesses that aren’t driven by hard data.
I still receive messages from people who say they want to teach me the right way to blog.
Messages about ways to improve my SEO efforts and how to improve the graphic elements.
They tell me they can increase my readership exponentially and offer stories about the benefits.
Sometimes I look at that notebook that once was so important to me and ask if we ought to give it another shot and see how that rolls.
‘Cuz sometimes you find that spark hasn’t ever extinguished and the love you thought was gone isn’t.
If you find that passion for putting the words upon the page it can really help you light things up. There is no faster way to bore your readers than to realize you’re content is suffering because you’re bored with your own writing.
Hard to hit entertaining, informative or educational if your words put you to sleep.
Not saying mine do, but I am cognizant of when I feel like I have hit the mark or fallen short of it.
Given that so much of this is subjective that may or may not be a problem but I prefer to feel good about the content than to feel like I mailed it in.
