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In the beginning...
So. This is a blog.
Huh.
I mean, I don’t know what I expected; I figured it was the fair-featured descendant of the plan (or .plan or plan.txt or even the plan.com) and I suppose it is. Evolution does take some big steps.
But what, some of you may ask, is this “plan” of which I speak. To answer that, I must take you back to the Good Old Days at Kenyon College. While I was there, a techno-god of sorts called the VAX walked the earth (or at least an area within some small distance of the library). Some will say this was a fallen god, an imperfect god, a god more impotence than omnipotence. I will leave these questions to the theologians and these people to the fires of hell. Now, the VAX had power over e-mail, over word processing (at least for a time), and all kinds of stupid computer tricks. The great VAX also facilitated a good deal of behavior that might be classified as stalking. For instance, using the “finger” command, one could find out 1) if a person was on-line (or when he/she had last been on), 2) which of the VAX’s abilities an online user was using, and 3) the curious/bored/procrastinating could see a file that user had posted, called a plan. This fair child of the god was a text file containing, well, whatever. Some put poems or stories or quotations, some put more or less coherent ramblings, some vacuous souls put nothing at all. These plans might be changed daily, nearly-daily, occasionally, or never. I also had such a thing, and if we were to plot it on a graph, we would be on the “frequently change” side and the “semi-coherent ramblings” side of things.
So. This is the background. I had more or less ignored the evolutionary cycle of the plan-blog branch of things after college. For a while, I maintained an archive of old plans, but then Kenyon stopped giving me free space and no one else was foolhardy enough to offer. Then a few months ago, I found that Kapoo, a friend and co-worker (he might debate the first designation and I might debate portions of the second, but it will stand for now) at Pencey Prep , has one of these “blog” things. I looked at it, enjoyed it, and went about my life. And then I once again had blogging intrude upon my life, now in the context of a Kenyon friend (one Erich Kurschate ‘99) telling me of the blog of another Kenyon friend, the witty, erudite, and charming Matt Lavine ‘97. I read a fair portion of the recent postings on Basket Full of Puppies and sent a comment to Mr. Lavine. My presence in this august person’s comments section drew a comment from still another Kenyon friend, Tim Moyle ’97. To wit: “Sherck has a blog, right? Mr. I-Update-My-.plan-Daily has a blog, right?” In point of fact, I did not. But then, under such strong public pressure, how could I not??
Okay, that’s a damned lie. I was already planning this blog before Moylet said anything. It didn’t take any pressure or hints of pressure to get me to do this. So then why? But first, let’s back up: what is this? My old plan was just whatever came to mind, the detritus of my brain, flaked off into a convenient electronic carrying case. Sometimes humorous, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes inane: a fair gamut, all in all. And I don’t suppose I’m the cutting-edge type, one who’s going to reinvent myself for the new times in which I find myself. Nope. Some old tired Sherck, same old tired shtick. Only I’ve probably lost some brain cells to age and attrition, a circumstance whose effect could be good or bad. You may wonder, then, why you should read it.
Beats me. My own motives are murky enough; I can hardly be expected to fathom yours, and so I won’t speculate on them. My own motives are actually probably pretty easy to plumb. You see, back when I updated my .plan with something like regularity, there were actually people who checked it with something like regularity. It was nice to have someone listening to what I said. Now, in May of 2004, I am a teacher, which means that no one listens to what I say. Administrators have better things to do and, for that matter, students probably do too, at least by their reckoning. Other teachers listen to me, but only on the condition that I listen back. Seeing the more or less devoted and not-inconsequential following that some bloggers achieve, I’m aiming for scores of semi-devoted reader. Or dozens. Handfuls? One or two? Whatever.