The written word

I go months without posting here. I go months without posting on some of my other blogs, too. It doesn’t help to build an audience, but that’s not really what this is about anymore. The purpose of this blog, when it started 20 years ago, was just to give me some sort of outlet to write, and some sort of recording of everyday life at a time when I wasn’t journaling. At some point social media met some of the need for an outlet, and now I’m back into journaling on paper again, so what I’ll do here isn’t clear. There are ideas, and they may come to nothing.

But for now I just want to say how much joy I’m getting from writing on paper again. I really wondered if I would ever do that again, if it was even possible, if my handwriting was too far gone from simple atrophy, from lack of habit. Well, my handwriting has never been any too clear, but like anything, it can be improved with practice. (Practice, practice, practice – why must that work? Why can’t I just be good at something to start?)

I started on this volume of thoughts back in May – we’ll call that volume, for obvious reasons, “Best of Cream.”

I finished that book at the very end of September, my longest streak of journaling in decades – not before learning a very important lesson about the water-absorbent qualities of paper and the transient nature of non-permanent ink. I went out one morning to write in the pergola, and finding some dew on the table, decided not to lay my notebook there until I had had a chance to wipe it off – so instead I lay my notebook on one of the upholstered chairs, forgetting that dew doesn’t care where it sits:

Having completed that book, I have moved on to the next volume, featuring a very hip cover from a very un-hip album (which I deduce from the barely announced presence of Bobby Goldsboro) – a cover that makes me wish I could have Rich make a notebook from “The Ventures Knock Me Out,” but I know I could never sacrifice a copy of that glorious cover. (Also, nothing I could write would be worthy.) This will have to do:

I absolutely love being able to distinguish my journals not just by their boring stationery store stock covers, but in this way, and there could be a natural progression that makes sense in my mind forever, rather than having to look at the dates I’ve scribbled on the inside covers to remember the proper order. I’ve already picked out my next notebook, though I’m months away from filling this one.

So, will I get back here to do some of these other projects I’m thinking of? We’ll just have to see.

In the meantime, I’m:

• Posting signs and markers most days at @Signsandmarkers
• Posting other nonsense, including my Sunday songs, at my main Instagram, @cjonthehudson
• Posting the story of my record collection in full blog form at VinylDistractions, and in pretty little square picture form at @vinyldistractions
• Posting ever more rarely about Albany, Schenectady and Troy history at Hoxsie.
• Tweeting nonsense at @cjonthehudson and several other accounts it’s just as well I didn’t mention, as they’re mostly there to troll my own kid, whose accounts are mostly there to troll me.