Day One — Interruptions Happen

Day One — Interruptions Happen

This is the restart of my blog.

I am using this discipline mostly for me. Not for friends and family, or even for whoever might happen to read it. A blog is something I don't have to advertise, send to anyone, or wonder whether people want to receive. Those interested in the journey can follow along. Everyone else can go about their lives.

I have set a goal of writing forty essays in the weeks ahead.

I have two rather unusual inspirations.

The first is Andy Rooney. I always loved the way he could write about almost nothing. A desk drawer. A pair of shoes. Something somebody said. The mundane could suddenly bump into history, human nature, or simply something worth noticing.

The second is Seinfeld—a television show famously built around the idea of being about nothing. A handful of people talking, complaining, observing, and reacting to the ordinary absurdities of life.

Maybe that's closer to what I want this blog to become.

I have spent much of my life watching people, watching the world, noticing little things, and occasionally laughing at myself. So I feel no pressure to make these forty essays profound. They don't have to become chapters in a book. They don't even have to contain a lesson.

They can simply be stories.

Moments. Hours. Conversations. Observations. Things that happen when life doesn't go according to plan.

Because interruptions happen.

Mine began four months ago with a head-on collision and continued through 120 days of recovery, including an unexpected brain bleed and another interruption to the interruption.

Resuming writing seemed like a good idea.

I was extremely nervous when I began. Would my sentences make sense? Could I still organize my thoughts? Could I take something happening inside my head and turn it into words on a page?

If it is indeed possible for the brain to heal itself over time, perhaps these forty essays will become my very unscientific contribution to the research.

I have already noticed something.

Writing gives me small daily wins. I have grown accustomed to those through years of journaling, essays, and eventually books.

One paragraph can become another. A thought can become a story. An ordinary moment can become an essay.

Writing also fills some of the idle hours that have come with 120 days and nights of recovery. More importantly, it helps me deal with what I have lost during that time—emotionally, relationally, and in the simple satisfaction of getting things done.

But perhaps the greatest gift is hope.

When I finish a paragraph and read it back, I realize something is happening inside my brain that I cannot see and certainly cannot control.

A broken bone can be X-rayed. A scar can be seen. A mile walked can be measured.

How do you measure a healing brain?

Maybe, for me, one way is a sentence.

Then a paragraph.

Then an essay.

Forty of them?

We'll see.

Day One.