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In keeping  with my own personal thanksgiving tradition, I am sitting in my 'home', minding my own business, and polluting the interweb with a blog post. I hope that my massive readership is having the day they want to have with no regrets, and that they enjoy my latest poor attempt at entertaining them.

There is a reason that this blog is as old as it is, and will continue to grow older. It is the simple fact of writing. I started a long time ago trying to write, and looking back at my first posts, I realize they are dreadful. However, like most skills, writing requires practice, and this blog is my practice. An open practice for all who care to attend. I certainly hope that over the years of my practicing my writing that it has improved. On my good days, I look back at the newer stuff, and think to myself that is has gotten better, on my bad days I look at it, and cringe. On numerous occasions my hand has hovered on the 'delete blog' button, but I have always managed to talk myself out of such a radical step. 

For better or worse (mostly worse) I write it down. Now that world has gotten all fancy and shit, writing is not really what I do. What I do is type it all down, but the theory remains the same. Write it all down, or at least as much as you can, or care to, remember. Write down as much as you have the time to do, write down as much as your inherent laziness allows you to.  For if you don't write it down, there is no real way to make sure it actually happened. Volumes and volumes of 'history' have been lost to time because no one was there to write it down. Not that anything I engage in is remotely worthy of the history books, but again the theory remains the same.

History, that odd collection of dates, facts, people, places, and things that we selectively choose to record, is something for books. My life is not something that needs to be shaped into a book form. For the most part it is as dull as watching paint dry, the few moments of excitement are hardly worth the hours of mindless drudgery that make up the majority of my time on this planet.  History is, the saying goes, written by the winners. Once again this probably excludes me or mine from the history books. While  I am (I hope) not quite the loser that I can make myself out to be, or quite the loser that a few people would tell you I am, I do not delude myself into thinking that I am a 'winner.'  At best, I am just trying to draw with life, and I don't mean I plan on making pretty pictures, I mean I would like to at least keep life even.  I don't want to be carried around the village square on the shoulder of my boon companions (it would take a lot of boon companions to lift my big ass) in some celebration of my accomplishments, but I also don't want to be wheezing out my dying breath in some dingy hotel room, in some wayward city on the frontier of nowhere mourned by only the hotel clerk, and the rest of the vermin with whom I shared the place. 

Therefore, my history, the only history I really care about (there was a time, a life time ago when that was not true) is something that I have to write down, or it did not really happen. Thus, this blog, a place that while I sorely neglect from time to time, has become my own personal history channel.  A channel that anyone can watch, and anyone can ignore, I figure that the ignore camp is by far the majority in this, but as I have written before, I do not particularly care. After all what I am writing down is, in the main, the history of me. Certainly there are other actors on this stage with me, and some of them are extremely important. Some of them have such major roles that if they were to cease to be then I might as well book that lonely hotel room, and await the end I hope to avoid. Of course, there are also the bit players, the one that are limited to 'their hour upon stage' and are heard of no more. Mere blips on the radar screen that is my history.  Important blips, maybe, but still blips.  Some choose to be blips, coming into my life, taking a look around, and after calm consideration, deciding that my life was not quite the stage that they were meant for.

Which is fair enough, after all we are all living our own histories, and I am quite certain that to many I am merely a blip, a bit player on the stage of their life. Truth be told, that is (mostly) all I ever really want to be, I am not leading man material for anybody else but myself. I have to be my own leading man in my history, I can't get around that problem. However, the Clark Gables of the world need not fret, I actively seek to avoid leading man roles for others. Although despite my best attempts there are a few people who would tell you that I play a fairly large role in their life/history. Of course, there are ones who would tell that they would prefer that not to be true, and are busy trying to 'consign me to the dustbin' of their histories, a task that I do not try to hinder. But, there are also (I hope) there are a select few that would tell you that, while I might be a mad cunt, I play a larger role in their life than either one of us is happy about.  I also suspect, there exists (an even more select) few that tell you that if I were to 'be heard of no more' if would make their history poorer. It is to the latter group that I dedicate this post to, but as I ponder upon it more, I also dedicate this post to those blips, those poor players that decided for better or worse to strut off my stage. After some of you have provided me with reams of material that is, as yet, unwritten.  Merci.