Fifty Mile Point

I have started a new blog - or created the container for one, perhaps I should say. To state something that seldom needs stated about physical things, but is often forgotten with intangibles, the proper intent for creating something new is to service a different necessity. That is the case here. Anyway, it's not a case of overflow, certainly, given how infrequently I have been posting here.

Rather, I have found my blogging constrained by that most ancient of obligations - to reality - where even my more drifting thoughts anchor to some post set in the real world. What I have discovered is that my desire to write has changed over time, from expressing a clear reality of a circumstance to expressing a clear essence of a circumstance. These are very different things, and whereas I once finished most of the posts I began, nowadays my batting average might be 25%. The most common cause of these failures is an acute frustration, caused by a desire to break free of the bounds of reality within a format where I feel compelled to tell a literal truth. This compulsion extends even into the subjective, and feelings - I could not so much as claim a feeling I do not feel in this format.

Fifty Mile Point will be a place formally detached from this narrow constraint, though I don't believe this means necessarily that the content of the blog will strictly resemble self-contained fiction. Though I often do write fiction, I also find inspiration by starting from some memory and taking creative license with it. This process of exploration is really an artistic endeavor - to uncover some broader truth within it. In theory (and maybe in practice - we shall see), it is just as likely that a post there would resemble one here - if it does, it will be nevertheless detached from literal reality to some degree.

I have moved one prior post from here to there - the single time I posted something here that now belongs there - a creative license that I never repeated. I will provide the warning that I feel no special obligation to finish fiction - not because it is not an important goal, but because I will never get anything released if I hold myself up to that standard (by which I would have a whopping one thing to show for 2+ years of writing). They will be better thought of as sketches, or brushstrokes. Some will be bad. I am certain many of them will resonate only with me. For all the challenges of fiction, the most elusive to me is the means by which something that speaks to me is judged on its appeal to others. I have no such talent.

I hope this doesn't mean this blog is done, although as long as I am using writing to express things that are meaningful to me, I will be satisfied that I have this hobby.