06:15 PM: [Emmy] just emailed to say that the Penguins are playing the Washington Capitals this evening, beginning at 7:30. I may listen to some of the contest with her. But I have lots of reading to do in my quest to make up for all that wasted time in high school when, instead of the studious consumption of books, I spent most of my study hall periods out on the playground, listening to the radio. I enjoyed the music supremely, and remember all of it today, just like then; I hold those memories in this highest esteem.
However, filling my mind with popular tunes for hours each day while most of the other students studied, did little to advance me academically, and in fact, it may have hurt me severely; though that pain would not become apparent for nearly a decade. Indeed, those leisure times in the late 1970s laid the road to a very disheartening subsequent era for me in college during the mid 1980s, as I struggled to overcome my academic short-falls while at the same time, trying to keep abreast of all the new material being taught. Much of what the college curriculum assumed I already knew well, I actually knew not at all. Nor did I ever quite manage to catch up either.
As a result, though I got through college with a 3.0 GPA, I always felt like I was behind; like the other students knew so much more than me, though I had no idea of precisely what that was. Now that I’ve begun reading the classics in earnest, I’m starting to understand that there were many, many things I needed to learn prior to college, but did not. Remembering things was most difficult, and I suspect now that this was because I did not have a good level of high school academic knowledge in my head, upon which to build more learning. I’d have done well to attend community college for a year or two, to better prepare for collegiate course work.
I have only myself to blame, as many books were available to me in the WPSBC library during the music years. But I just never felt like reading them. It’s not that I never tried. I did, but usually found the books boring. They used so many words I did not understand, and wrote of many concepts that were foreign to me. Sometimes, though written in English, I felt as though the books were actually speaking a foreign language; one that I’d never studied. In those years, I rarely enjoyed reading; the activity nearly always left me confused and feeling quite inadequate. So along about ninth grade, I decided that I’d probably never do well with books and academia in general. Now, here I am some thirty-five years later, hoping to undo the ravages of that choice.
I never liked writing in school either; no doubt because with my weak reading background, the task of writing seemed overly complex as I possessed fewer immediately recallable metaphors and similes to site in my papers. As a writer today, I understand that reading and writing come as a package, and that one is not complete without the other. It’s hard therefore to do one of them well without doing the other too. Since I did neither of these very much in high school, it stands to reason therefore, that I’d find both of them difficult and pointless besides.
So it’s ironic that I should choose a writing career as my final livelihood. How did this come about? As a software engineer, I had to write profusely to maintain and cultivate my business relationships, convey high and low-level software designs to team members, and to adequately document the software I assembled. In a typical work year, I might issue nearly four thousand email messages and printed documents and letters. Fifteen years of that sort of work therefore, went far to eliminate the dreaded writers blocks, that so plagued me in school. Thus, by necessity, once the act of writing grew to be less of a struggle, I came to enjoy doing it.
Then, when Internet blogs came into vogue, I thought that blogging would be the ideal job for me because I can do it all from home here, and therefore don’t need to worry about getting rides anywhere; at least not routinely anyhow. The upfront investment costs for a blog-based business are very low (I’ve spent less than $500 on my three blogs), and the only thing you really have to put into it to make it fly besides a modest amount of money, is your dedication. With blogging, you can also avoid the dreaded and nearly countless rejection letters you get when submitting articles to paper-based publishers. As a blogger, I decide what gets published and when, and none of my choices requires the approval of a single person. A sole proprietor’s bloging success (or failure) depends ultimately on the collective approval or disapproval of all those who read it. It does not rely on a single boss who may dislike me personally and thus too-frequently rejects my pieces. Nor does it count on an editor who thinks I don’t write well enough, a curator who doubts that he could find any publishers wanting to print my works, or publishers themselves who deem that my stuff does not fit well with their type of content. With my blogs, I avoid all these problems, and at the risk of sounding cliché, I write my own ticket.
Since years working in the corporate world have left me averse to ever being employed again in any tightly-organized corporate command structure, I’ve come to see blogging as my way back to success, without all that corporate overhead and stress to interfere. Not only does Internet publishing offer good money-making potential, but I can do it as I feel, and I’m rarely if ever forced to write about things I care nothing about. In fact, it’s best that you don’t write about a subject you have no interest in.
So it seems that, though I angrily resisted writing in school some twenty to thirty years ago, these days, the act of jotting down my heart has become my friend, my teacher, and hopefully my salvation. I’m eager for writing to enable me to once again contribute in meaningful, respectful, and positive ways to society, without having to answer to pesky bosses. But as I said above, to write well, one must read well too, and reading well cannot be accomplished in my opinion, unless you read a lot. I believe that the more I read, the better I’ll write. Further, the sooner I eliminate my high school academic deficiencies (by reading all those great books that I avoided back then), the quicker my blogs will become successful.
This is why I have this driving (and perhaps obsessive) urge to read so much today, because I’m making up for much lost time. So over the next year or two, you’ll read on this blog about many books that I’m reading myself. I’ll use Tom’s Diary to track my progress, and hopefully as time advances, you, my readers, will notice vast improvements in my writing style. I wish more than anything to be learned; the older I get, the less tolerant I am to my own ignorance. I want to be in the know. The hope is that not only will blogging generate a good living for me, but will also make me smarter and thus, bring the solutions to life’s many problems closer to hand. We’ll just have to see how it goes. So stay tuned.
Take care.
Tom Hesley
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