Why does anybody want to know what I think?

I am glad to have yet another way to express my thoughts, feelings, dreams, whims, fancies, ideas, quirks, impulses, rants, raves, grumbles, praise, criticism, opinions, struggles, achievements, idiocy and genius. The question is, who wants to know any of that stuff other than my family, a few friends, and some poor soul who is up at 4 am needing a reason to log off and get to bed? As a song writer, and copy writer, and email writer, I always have to know who I am writing to, and what I am trying to convey in my writing. But here, I have no idea. My wife and music partner Ellen has been writing her Blog for a few months now, and seems to enjoy it, so I have decided to put fingers to keyboard and join the fad of journaling for the masses. Except, what masses? With millions of pages online, and billions of words being written by regular Joes (sorry to the Joes out there, it's nothing personal) in blogs just like this one, I am sure that my musings will have little impact beyond some folks seeing that I have some sense of humor and a brain in this ever graying head of mine. But I do love to muse in print, and since my handwriting has degenerated beyond belief and legibility, I find myself hunting and pecking at ever faster speeds on a typewriter style keyboard, making me wish I'd taken a few classes in my youth with my Mom, a lifelong typist and teacher of keyboarding (hi Mom, I love you!) instead of whatever other thing I found time to do, like maybe watch sports on TV. Anybody else out there wish there were a few more brain cells devoted to important things and a few less devoted to remembering things like, oh, the starting lineup of the the Boston Red Sox "Impossible Dream" team of 1967? I sure do. Other than winning a bar bet someday (if I ever go into another bar, or ever bet- the main reason I got into playing in bands was to have some reason to go to bars in the first place... no wait, I got into music to meet and impress girls back in high school, same as almost every other guy I've known who played guitar!) having such relatively useless information filling up gray matter is a hardship, especially if one is trying to learn a new language (Hebrew) or remember directions after finally stopping the car to ask someone. I know I can't unlearn such stuff (Joe Foy, 3rd base), and it isn't that my brain is full, but at this age (49 1/2, funny how you start to do that again after you quit doing it when you turned 13!) I need every excuse I can use.

Now, if you've read this far, you are either my mother (Love you Mom) or someone who enjoys long, rambling sentences and disjointed thought patterns. Or maybe someone studying the mind of bloggers, hoping to find out why anyone actually writes these things in an age of too much content, too much news, too much opinion. Stop wasting your time with figuring out this one, buddy, even I'm unsure why I am writing this. We'll all find out together (again, assuming there is an "all" at all) and know more soon. I'll keep me posted...

Some people out there already know what a wordy writer I can be; I get excited writing to people, and even more excited receiving a reply that has more than "yup" and "nope" in them. I understand we're all busier than ever working at these labor saving devices, but please, write a few more words than 2 if I've written you a paragraph or more! Heck, with spell check and grammar check, it is almost impossible to make a fool out of yourself by stringing a few thoughts together, just like they did in the old days of pen and paper. As for me, my mind goes a million miles an hour anyway, so once voice recognition takes off ("Grandpa, did people really use typing to communicate with computers?") I'll be the most prolific writer on the planet. I can't keep up with all the thoughts I want to write as it is, because of my typing limitations (sorry Mom, I should have taken your class, love you!) but as you can see, if you've dared confront falling off your chair reading this far, there is still no shortage of blather I can get down on paper. Or screen. You get the idea.

So, let's see if anybody responds to this first post, or actually gets this far (here's a test: who was the shortstop for that '67 Sox team that first broke my heart?) and then I'll know if blogging has a future in my busy world. It's unfair, in a way, to do this test since we are mailing our fan base of 3,500+ email subscribers tonight and mentioning this new blog, but what the heck, who said life was fair anyway? I read my contract with the universe, that fairness clause must have been left out. If there ever was one to begin with...