2019 Wrap Up

For almost a decade I have written a blog post once a week. If I look back on the years 2010 to 2018, I can sum up all my posts into categories: things I wanted to share, blocks of instructions, book reviews, reading lists, author interviews and rants that I called “a call to arms.” After the first year or so, I found it difficult to keep coming up with something to write about. Every year in December when thinking about what I wanted to do for the coming year, I would try to plan things out. At best I could come up with a few ideas, often seasonal things.

For 2019, I thought I would write my manifesto. Over the years I would think about my manifesto or at the very least what my manifesto would be like. I could never come up with anything particularly. I have so many pages of musings, and sketches of ideas, but I never completed a single thing. So, knowing this about myself, why now? Why 2019? And furthermore, what would my manifesto be like? After all, I don't live in a secluded cabin with a personal vendetta against anyone or anything. I really don't care about anything. Part of it is apathy, and part of it is that I have gotten to think about the things I wanted to think about, and I've always gotten to do all the things that I've ever wanted to do. A manifesto for a guy like me is not really something I would need to do.

But, I was faced with 52 blog posts for the year 2019. I decided that I would make a cohesive piece of writing that I would then split up over the entire year. I decided to have exactly 12 chapters of about 4,000 words each that I would make into 4 blog posts of 1,000 words each. I would post on Wednesdays. Not a bad way of doing things. Then I decided that I would share something, a Youtube video or something else that would enhance my series in those months when there were five Wednesdays.

So, then, what would I write about?

Well, I took to my heroes. I looked at all the chapter headings that Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson had. I looked at the various points of the Scout Law that I know so well from my time with The Boy Scouts of America. I came up with nearly twenty chapter titles. Then I narrowed it down to twelve.

Then I wrote.

The two things I was hoping to achieve with this exercise were these: a cohesive manuscript and an ease in the writing of a year's worth of blog posts. I feel successful on both counts. I feel like I could read this entire year's worth of posts as a single manuscript-style manifesto. And I also feel like it was an easy thing to write. Every time I sat down to write, I knew exactly where I was, where I was heading and where I have been.

In short, it was a great experience.

The Future Part 3

At the time of this writing, there is one book getting published on Amazon every ninety seconds. If this post is approximately 600 words which should taken about three minutes to read, there will be four new books published on the online giant. Of the four books published during the reading of this, at least half will be self-published. And if you have a book which you think the world needs, you can probably publish your own book in about the same three minutes.

In a way, this is the greatest thing to every happen to the literate world. I mean, who wouldn't want to have all the books you could ever read at your disposal?

In a way, this is horrifying. Rather than having books, we now have data. We have data in lieu of any real knowledge. It's horrifying because we don't really have anything real, tactile, tangible. An ebook is great, but what happens when the “e” part fails. What do we do when the power goes out? We'll have the piece of mind that every ninety seconds a book was published.

The Future Part 2

Autumn of 2009 found me as an adjunct faculty member on a very collegiate looking campus. I walked through the old buildings which were half vacant and somewhat crumbling in the quiet and abandoned nooks. It felt good to walk through the trees on the outskirts of campus as the old trees began their transition to fall colors and finally shed those leaves outright. The entire fall semester was such a learning experience for me. I was still fresh out of graduate school and believed I could be, if the experience was good to me,a college instructor. Incidentally, it was not a positive experience and after the semester ended, I never taught in a formal classroom again.

The two things that really annoyed me were the two predictable things. At the time the economy was failing, or had failed. When the economy dips, it's predictable that college enrollment will increase. I found the administration at the college to be very out of touch with the outside world. They were scrambling to find classrooms and instructors for recession refugees turned enrolled students. The administrators also seemed somewhat annoyed that there was an increase of work due to these external circumstances. The second thing that really bothered me was the cellphones in my classroom. I had a few legitimate students, the rest were cellphones. At least that was the way I saw them, I saw them as cellphones. Needless to say, I could not wait to get through the 17 week semester.

The Future

If there is anything that I am thankful for, it's that I am unable to see the future. I know there are some people who wish they could see into the future, but for me, I think this would be a very dire curse. After all, if you knew what was going to happen, wouldn't you be constantly worried about it? And furthermore, wouldn't you be depressed that the future was not now?

When it comes to the future, I don't feel particularly hopeful. I once felt hopeful about the future, which is strange that I no longer do. I feel like the things I was once very excited about are the very things that now make me a no hoper. There are a few of these points. For the sake of this argument, it's the future of readers, writers and publishers that concern me.