Blogging . . . and Oh, That Bill That Passed on Sunday

You thought I might write about the so-called healthcare reform bill passing yesterday, didn't you? Well, guess what? I'm going to write about it today. Not because I'm writing this on Tuesday. No, you're just seeing it today because I wrote it on Monday, just as I wrote yesterday's uplifting entry last Friday. Now, are you totally confused?

Don't be. The software that I blog on--the imaginatively named "Blogger"--allows you to date an entry at any date and hour your little heart desires. So it's not at all unusual for me to post-date entries when I write them, or, as in the case yesterday and for all the entries you'll see when I'm out of town next month, pre-date them. What happens is I run across something that I say "Well, this is something I've got to blog about," and I put the URL on the desktop. But, I can hear you thinking ahead, don't you end up with more than you can possibly blog about because of all the shit that's constantly happening that requires (or at least elicits) your commentary? Answer: of course. I always have much more stuff than I can write about. Indeed, I throw away many more URLs to bloggable items than I use. Indeed, there's no end to them.

All which is to say that what you end up reading here, those few of you that do read here, is the product of: 1) a lot of more or less aimless reading I do on the Net--well, not really "aimless" in that sense, "randomly focused" might better describe it; 2) an obsession with politics (this goes back virtually to childhood); 3) an ego large enough to suppose that at least a few people might care what I think; 4) a mostly unconscious, although sometimes not, desire to leave some trace of the fact that I was here once; to leave some evidence for my kids and grandkids of what I thought about things, a little trace of me for history (and for a historian, history is never out of our minds)*; 5) unadulterated obsession--I have several of these, as my family will attest; 6) a desire for amusement. Yes, I did find it amusing at times to write this blog, and I worked a lot of years, and a great deal of them in an environment I did not find particularly congenial, the military (I much prefer the academic environment; I could go to school all the time. Indeed, in grad school that's where I thought I was heading. Fate intervened: it's another whole story how a near pacifist ended up working for the Dept of Defense his whole life).

Hey, remember I was going to say something about the healthcare bill that passed on Sunday? My time is up. I'll have to take care of that tomorrow.

*Long about the mid-1980s or shortly thereafter, the practice of writing and mailing real letters that you sent by first class snail mail began waning even for those of us, like me, who were regular letter writers. Obsessive that I am, I saved all those, too.