August 1, 2005
Blogging resumes at the old stand after a long absence. Why did it stop? I’m not sure I can honestly say it was "writer’s block." Don’t you suffer from that when you want to write, or have pending project that must be done and you just can’t get a handle on it?
Whatever. I simply didn’t want to write. I felt no need to write and as I had no projects hanging over my head I didn’t. So why am I starting again?
I think I’m clearer about that. I found that in an odd sense I stopped thinking when I stopped writing. Oh, I conducted my life affairs with reasonable intelligence, figured things out, balanced my check book and kept up with the news. I had attitudes, notions, and opinions about the world but they were largely unexamined. If I had an opinion I wanted to express I simply uttered it in the most plonking way possible and moved on.
Socrates reminds us that the unexamined life is not worth living. Writing clearly is one way we examine our lives, justify our beliefs, and keep ourselves from unreasonable prejudices.
So here we go again.
