Writing the Blog, Aiming for More

As you may have inferred, I have been trying to write a post every day. While I certainly wanted to share some of our experiences from the summer – and I still have a lot more to write on that score – attempting to craft a daily post was also about just getting in the habit of writing again. As any writer (I include myself in that category not because of the quality of my work, but just because I have churned out a dissertation and more than a few other sustained efforts) can tell you, much of writing is practice, in both the training and application sense of the word; the blog posts have been a means of reinitiating my writing practice. While I have not begun to actually write anything beyond the blog, this effort is in anticipation of trying to get on paper some thoughts I have about our society’s or, perhaps more honestly, just my own relationship to nature. Much of these ideas are about being on the water, but they also stray into ecological restoration, environmental activism, and the connections between culture and environment. I have not actually willed myself to start the hard work of formulating these ideas in text, of taking what is undoubtedly nebulous and disjointed in my brain and working it into an understandable and, hopefully, coherent and engaging whole on paper. But I feel like I am getting close to beginning a second writing session each morning for just that purpose. We will see how that goes. And, on the blog tomorrow, I will get back to talking about boat things.