Everything is unique. Not everything is relevant. One of the interesting things about “relevant” is that it’s subjective. Another interesting thing about “relevant” is that it’s something that we, as people don’t always care about. But, in addition to being unique, we as people have an innate desire to be known. I could speculate endlessly here about why we want to be known in rambling philosophical ways, but the short answer is that I don’t know. We may want to be known, based on an absurd compunction to try and share the unknown; it could be a reaction to our mortality; or it could be a selfish desire to aid our genes; or maybe it’s where I started, that it’s something unquantifiable; like the number forty-two; or something extra simple, like a desire to be famous and have a different life from our mundane yet special existence; whichever it is, I still don’t know. What I do know is that now, thanks to the interwebs, more people have the opportunity to share what they do know with a larger audience. I also know that I have no idea what the state of the “blogosphere” is now, or how many people there are out there blogging – and frankly, after doing a small amount of research, I’m not sure anyone does – there’s a lot of people out there, each acting in their own distinct way (for purposes of simplicity, I’ve lumped all social media here – tweeting, blogging, and other things into this category, even though it’s not technically correct). (Also, Technorati.com provides information on the blogosphere each year, but after reviewing their 2009 recap, I could not find any “hard” data on how many people were out there blogging, despite all the graphs they provided: http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/).
The irony of wanting to be known, and trying to be known is the information overload – by all of us trying to impress on each other that we are unique, we are all somewhat similar, if not the same. Yeah, I’ll be honest - that last sentence is a trite point, and it is a fair amount of the pot calling the kettle black, and yes, I am part of the blogosphere that I just was attacking. I don’t see it as an attack though. I see it as a positive thing. In a city; country; continent; world; galaxy and universe where everything is completely unique, it’s nice to have some continuity at times. Continuity isn’t all bad – it prevents us from going insane, because if we were to constantly focus on how things are always different and unique, make no mistake about it, we would go insane – and fast. These concepts are just too complex to constantly fixate on.
It’s easy for me to admit that when I started this blog, I wanted some continuity. I wanted to be known. Mainly, though, I wanted to write this blog to preserve my memories and my stories. If you’ve read any of these posts, you, the reader know that I’ve been lucky by cheating death in many ways. There isn’t a day that goes by where I take any of that luck, skill, and other things for granted. After feeling grateful for being alive, I feel fortunate that I still have the capacity to remember everything that happened. Life is fickle. When I began, I wanted to put down my life’s stories so that I would always have them, despite what would – or could happen to the imperfect storage device of my brain. After all, logic – and the laws of probability indicate that sooner or later, either that age will catch up and eat large holes in the files, or that my infinite luck will run out.
A cynical person would say at this point would say, “Yeah, right. You, like everyone else wanted to be famous. (Insert sneer here).” Sure, being famous would be great. I’m not going to lie. At the end of the day, though, what I always wanted to do was tell stories; it’s just something you’re going to have to take on faith. That’s what I always wanted to do – hear and tell stories. Whether it’s with a drink in hand at a noisy club, where every third word is obscured, or around a fire where the silence catches every letter’s inflection, I like to tell and listen to stories. In that respect, it was always my intent that you – the reader, pictured this blog as a conversation, with me as that oddball quirky friend that you shook your head at for being utterly ridiculous. For a second, I’ll allow myself a self-congratulatory moment, and say that in many ways I’ve accomplished that. There are some posts I’d like back to re-write and edit more (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-firering/2005/8/13/episode-ii-the-ill-fated-beginning.html) and some posts that I’d probably like to redact period (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-firering/2006/3/3/episode-xxxviii-in-terms-of-trickiness-i-get-an-extra-d12-roll-for-guile.html), and some that I like (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-firering/2006/1/30/episode-xxxi-this-wondrous-invention-does-everything-it-slices-it-dices.html). The problem with self-congratulatory bullcrap, however, is that it hides the problems.