So much more to say ...

The first blog post.

I have to remind myself: It's a blog.

It doesn't have to be perfect.  I don't have to read it backwards from the end, sentence by sentence, to make sure it's sound down to the last phrase.  In fact, if I don't tell anyone about it, the writing doesn't even have to be good.

Before I began this post I asked myself, as I do before every writing project, who is my audience?

Oddly, for this particular piece, I think it is me.  I need to get this off the ground and this is the pep talk I need.  If you stick with me, I promise there will be one aimed at you, or someone you know, soon enough.

I have a friend, my drummer friend, named Neel.  I met him in Los Angeles years ago.  He now makes a living as a performing percussionist.  (I don't want to work, I just want to bang on my drum all day.)  He teaches, of course, but he also plays a lot of gigs.  That should actually be spelled A LOT.  His goal is to do 300 shows every year.  Sure, he could probably find one steady gig that played six nights and paid the same, but he hasn't and the 300 is a challenge for him.

So, I told myself: You must write 300 entries in a blog this year.

It seems manageable ... right?

Granted, I have no idea what I'm in for, having never posted a single blog before, but I've been writing every day (or close enough) for many years and I have a lot to say.

Which reminds me of a band that Neel played in back when we both lived in Los Angeles.  The band was called Woodshed.  The lead singer / guitarist was a funny, talented, Asian-American guy named Son (or Sun, I don't think I ever saw it spelled) and he had this one song that went:

"How could you walk away / when I had so much more to say"

Then it just kept repeating, or worse, had long instrumentals.  It drove my overly-literal mind crazy and I said something to him more than once over drinks.

"If you're going to claim that you had so much more to say, you have to say SOMETHING.  Give us a sample.  Give us something."

He didn't have anything to say about my comments.  In fact, he seemed pretty non-plussed by the observation.  Neel left the band, as well as the next one, and the one after that, and eventually we both left L.A.  You can't blame us really, their lyrics don't make sense.

As I prepare to write these blogs, I think of how fortunate I am to know a lot of people who do make sense, including (hopefully) myself and I will write about them (us) over the course of the year.  In addition, I'll write about the morons in the public eye and anything else I can come up with in order to reach my goal.

Incidentally, I do not consider Son/Sun a moron, simply an artist not looking for my advice.  I can dig that.  Since losing my job in May of 2011, I have had a lot of suggestions on what I should write and most of them are not what I am going to write.  Though it was a challenge, I have dropped my corporate mindset.  I hope to never tackle another project that doesn't make sense, instead I now focus my efforts on MY goals.

One of them is to say so much more.