20150710.0740

One of the benefits of maintaining a series of writings is that doing so allows for some ease of finding topics. There are always things left untreated in writing that has been done, loose ends that can be tied off later or toothing stones that can be used to build more walls and rooms. It is not proof against not having things about which to write, of course, but it is helpful. Today, it confronts me with two easy possibilities, for one of the ways in which having a body of writing to look over helps can be to look at what was written on similar days in the past. I have twice posted to this webspace on the tenth of July: 2010 and 2014. Either could well be a springboard for further work.

In 2010, I still lived in The City at Bedfordside Garden. My writing was less polished then than it is now, or so it seems to me; I wrote in choppy paragraphs with unreasonably complex sentence structures. I was still at work on dissertation materials at that time, though, and it is possible that that work infected my other writing. Dissertations are consuming, as those who have written them can attest, and since they represent the ability to enter into prevailing academic discourse standards, they tend to be more...complicated in their syntax and lexicon than many other works. Too, they also tend to treat ideas difficult for their writers, a tendency that puts me in mind of Ian Barnard's piece in CCC 61.3, "The Ruse of Clarity." I write in fuller, more developed paragraphs now than I did then, and I like to think that I am better at adjusting my usage to suit my audiences now. That is not to say I dumb things down in this webspace, but I do not write it as I write when I write only to those whose training is like mine.

Last year, I was at Sherwood Cottage, considering the lawn and the social (and legal, as it happens) demands of attending to it. Then, as now, I did not look forward to working with the grass, although I am better equipped to do so now than I was then. I am in better practice with it, and I have more tools with which to perform the tasks, thanks to the kind gifts of family. Then, as now, I struggled with negotiating "traditional" masculinity and my own inclinations, and I wrestled with the idea of presenting a good model of adulthood to Ms. 8. I struggle less now than then, which may be because I either have better ideas now or have given up a large part of the fight to do so. (The former would be better. I worry that the latter is more likely.) My writing was more like what it is now in 2014 than in 2010, both in form and content--understandably so. What that indicates, however, is still not clear to me. More consideration will be needed. Fortunately, I can return to this post in the future, as well.