Getting Creative: Half-Baked Blog

(Continued from Getting Creative: Birth of a Blog)

Featured Photo: “Stonehenge at the Summer Solstice” Wiltshire, England—2015

Let me get it out of the way, right now: the Featured Photo has nothing to do with today’s post; I just like it. The photo was taken on a trip to Stonehenge in June 2015—a trip that also took me to the medieval cathedral city of Salisbury in southern England. As with my picture of the Strasbourg Cathedral—a story told in an earlier post—I’ve used this Stonehenge photo for many years on my iPhone, but in this case, as my Home Screen wallpaper. When I unlock my phone, all my colorful little apps appear to hover above the massive, cold, gray stones, that are themselves set amidst the green grass of that ancient site—that timeless wonder. I hope you also like the photo, but I’ll save my Stonehenge story for another day. Now, I’ll re-start today’s post with the opening I had originally written…

On my 60th birthday—just a few months after I retired—my wife gave me a book titled, “70 Thing to Do When You Turn 70.” I looked at her quizzically, and she told me the similarly titled book about turning 60 was out-of-stock when she ordered the gift. That made perfect sense, but I suspect she also wanted to give me a head start for planning the next decade of my life.

Even before I retired, my wife had been encouraging me to think of useful, meaningful, and interesting things to do with my time in retirement: projects through my consulting business; projects around the house; staying physically active; staying in touch with friends; volunteering in the community; pursuing something creative. The book from my wife was a collection of essays written by septuagenarians on keeping fit, staying mentally sharp, and enjoying the post-retirement years. As I began reading, a recurring theme in several essays was the advice to be creative—specifically to write. I felt the suggestion was empty and impractical—there was nothing about how to write, just do it. I just kept on reading, because writing did not really interest me at the time.

But two years later, after spending time with my brother in Montreat, and feeling excited about the possibility of my own blog, the book’s suggestion to write was exactly what I wanted to do! Returning home from that BroGo in 2020, I told my wife, “I’m going to write a blog!” She looked skeptical; it would not be the first time I had gotten excited about starting something new, only to have my enthusiasm fade over time. I assured her this was for real (or so I thought.) While in Montreat, I had jotted down some ideas for blog posts; back home, I began drafting several posts—photos and stories I wanted to share. And I kept adding more ideas to the list; I must have had 20 or 30 potential posts right from the start. I was having fun writing!

I want to return to the time I spent in 2020 with my brother in Montreat; I mentioned it was not the first time he had proposed that I write a blog. I can add that his suggestion came with significant experience in this matter. My brother started writing his own blog in 2013, and he often spoke of how much fun he had with it. When we were in Montreat, he had been posting for over seven years, once a week, every week, on a wide range of topics. As of this writing, he has maintained his routine for more than ten years—10 years! That’s over 500 posts! Clearly, he knew what he was talking about.

My brother’s blog is called: OneCreativeScientist.com, with the tagline, “Where creativity meets science.” As suggested by the title, he started it for a reason not unlike my own: having been a career scientist, he wanted to cultivate his creativity—perhaps even to prove the creativity was there. I have been reading and enjoying his blog for most of those years, although—I must admit—I was at first hesitant, perhaps jealously wondering, “What could he have to say?” Eventually, not only would I read his blog every week, but I would enjoy his accounts of the SibSabs and BroGos we had together over the years. You may find it interesting to read his own version (in two posts) of our BroGo 2020 in Montreat. Here is a link to the first of those posts.

Through his blog, he would even help nudge me toward getting my own blog started. Here is how that happened: in 2020, before he and I got together in Montreat, my wife and I had started a DIY project to renovate the downstairs powder room in our house. Like the ill-fated BroGo my brother and I had planned for Key West, the timing for our home renovation project was bad, due to the COVID pandemic.

Early on in the project, I ran into some practical problems that benefitted from my brother’s home repair experience. We started collaborating through FaceTime, so I could show him what was going on and to get his advice. At some point along the way, we recognized the project could possibly make an interesting story and he invited me to write a guest post for his blog. I told him I would be happy to do most of the writing—as I said, I was having fun writing—and the story of our virtual collaboration continued to grow and grow. The guest post turned out to be a series of eight! Here’s a link to the first of the series—published in November 2021—titled Virtual DIY Bathroom on my brother’s blog site.

I enjoyed writing for my brother’s blog and continued to prepare for my own. So why did it take another two and a half years after BroGo 2020 in Montreat before I published the first post on my blog site? A lot of the delay was due to competing priorities. I continued to write posts, but only occasionally. I also continued to work in my consulting role, which took a lot of time; there were consulting projects already in progress, which kept me busy during 2021 and 2022. I also took another job, that I did not list in my earlier post about retiring: I joined the adjunct faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia, co-teaching a class about Compendial Affairs (of course) in the “Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance” program in the School of Pharmacy, along with my co-author from the series of articles we had written. This new position added to my workload between 2021 and 2023.

Before the teaching even began, there was prep work we had to do: write the course syllabus; write class assignments and exams; prepare the PowerPoint presentations; and coordinate who would present each of the slides. When the class started in January 2023, we delivered the course content to a half-dozen students, virtually—a hold-over from the pandemic—for three hours, once a week for 12 weeks. And there always seemed to be grading to do. Regardless how I wanted to spend my time, I found myself always giving priority to the course, because of our responsibility to the university and our students. Don’t get me wrong, it was very rewarding to engage with the class and share information from our work experience about the esoteric realm of Compendial Affairs. But the time available for my creative writing was certainly reduced.

The final exam for the class was in mid-April 2023; by then, my other consulting projects had also reached their conclusion. Once we turned in final grades for the students, I found myself with a lot more free time on my hands. I threw myself back into working for the blog—looking through my photos and resuming my writing—and it was still fun!

Perhaps it was synchronicity that when I picked up my writing again, I also happened to pick up the latest novel by John Irving. (I hope to return to my love of reading in future posts, tentatively titled, “These Are a Few of My Favorite Authors.”)

While reading his book, I came across something that resonated with me, just as it had with Irving’s main character, a writer himself. I will attribute my source to Irving, but he credited the British author Graham Greene as the original source.

“So much of a novelist’s writing takes place in the unconscious: in those depths, the last word is written before the first word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.”

As with Irving’s fiction writer in “The Last Chairlift,” I was encouraged by these words. If a writer’s stories—which, for me, are just memories of real-life events—already live in our minds, then it is only a matter of remembering the details, so I can share them with you; and my photographs should help in my recollection. Hopefully, the pictures will also add to your enjoyment of the stories. At least, that is my intention.

As I looked over my collection of unfinished beginnings to numerous blog posts, I was also comforted by Irving’s words about so many writers having “unending works in progress.” That is a good thing: no shortage of ideas! And for me, a blog is a lot less demanding than a novel and much easier to reach the ending—especially when the target is a mere 1,000 words per post.

One final note from his book: Irving talks at length about proper punctuation in writing; he makes extensive use himself of the “much-maligned semicolon” and the misunderstood dash. You may have noticed—in my own writing—I have also adopted these punctuation marks with zeal!

But let me get back to my story. With my post-retirement work wrapped up, and finally making progress with my writing, I began to think the blog might actually happen. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that, in addition to writing, there was another half to starting a blog—the technical side—which brought an entirely different set of challenges.

(To be continued…)