Standards? What standards?

So, having established a base line (with emphasis on the "base") for my writing, let's explore the opposite boundary.

I have actually written on the blogosphere before. Gary Gagliardi

http://www.artofwarplus.com/wordpress/

invited me to contribute to his Warrior Class blog (on the side-bar over to the right there) based on my comments upon his posts. That proved to be a differently challenging experience then I had anticipated. Which, I should point out, Sun Tzu's strategic science and philosophy of bing fa teaches should be the case. I went through a bad bout of depression last year and that involvement sort of withered away.

But I discovered that I liked writing for it's own sake. And, that a professional writer and publisher agreed I had some raw talent, at least to the extent of being willing to have his reputation associated with my efforts, was real validation. But also a severe limitation, because the "voice" and direction of my writing were a product of the professional setting that his blog is an integral part of. So, here we are. Or I am. Or something.

Connie Du Toit's blog Personal Effects

http://www.mrsdutoit.com/index.php/main/

(also on the side-bar needless to say) is a good example of what I mean. While citing something she's written as example for a lesson on the bing fa or a strategic principle would certainly be valid and legitimate for Gary's blog, it wouldn't be a conversation between she and I. Now, the result might be entertaining or instructive for a reader, but it would be as artificial as any TV or Radio interview (or worse, infomercial) for Connie and I and that condition would also be obvious to a reader. The format of the blogosphere is a conversation between two or more people in a public forum. The writing on this page is me offering to chat with you; when you click on a link to here and start to read, that's us making eye contact and beginning to converse. And like any chat up at a party or the grocery store, the possibilities from there are whatever we both wish to make of them.

Connie, or Mrs Du Toit as she styles herself, is a skilled writer who considers a complex array of topics for discussion. And that's what often results, a discussion among several people, from differing perspectives, offering varying degrees of expertise and emphasis. Often instructive, usually entertaining, adamantly polite; in short, all the things I hope to find on a blog.

I'm not going to run down the entire link list. Sufficient to say that everybody is there because they are consistently interesting to me as a reader and inspirational to me as a writer. I recommend them in their own right and you can expect to see regular links to them in future.

You see, I actually can write without resorting to obsenity or scatological references, but don't be shocked when I periodically choose to do so. I dropped out of high school at 17, joined the US Navy and volunteered for service in Vietnam because each of those choices lead to an improvement in my life. Which wasn't terrible before then by any reasonable standard.

Such choices do leave their mark though it has to be said. One obvious mark is in my usual speech pattern. Even thirty years on, I still quite casually fall back on the speech patterns a 17 year old kid adopted in basic training to blend in with everybody else.

Enough. It's a beautiful, early August, Sunday afternoon here. I'm going to go out and get me some of it just for myself.

UPDATE: Yes, I see it says Saturday at the top there. I'm still figuring the Blogger process out. Bear with me, I doubt this will be the worst example to occur.