View From Here

[Note: This is a reprint from September 9, 2015. Is the message still valid today?]

It has been a while since I last considered the name of this blog. I’ve used View From Here as the title for the blog (4 years), but also for a weekly newspaper column (7 years) in a local newspaper.

When I first began writing for publication I searched for a name. View From Here popped into mind nearly at the outset. So I searched its uniqueness on the internet. I learned it wasn’t unique. Plenty of people have used and are using this title for all sorts of written material. I also learned that the title really isn’t copyrighted. All you have to do is associate the title with your name and consistently do so. I have so the title is mine to use.

Why this title? For some reason it speaks to me.  View is not a fact or factoid. It is an opinion held within someone’s mind, in this case, mine. So View From Here is a reference to an opinion or idle commentary on something worth focusing on. From is another word that holds a particular meaning. For me it refers to the environment or situation that embraces the issue being examined. My life and yours are different from each other; primarily because each of our lives exists and functions in their own space, time and relational elements. Although much of our lives may be similar, they are not the same. You and I are complex beings. We live in a highly disparate confluence of elements which conglomerate to form an environment or gestalt that forms a unique subculture. We react to that culture, appropriately or inappropriately. Those reactions set up other elements in the subculture to be reacted to as well. And soon our worlds are very separate indeed.

The from is very important in this sense. And it leads to…

The Here of the title. Here  is this unique moment and place. It is not yours or anyone else’s. It is mine. Only mine. My words pertain to this time capsule place in which I inhabit and form a commentary.

So, View From Here is an intellectual pinpoint upon which I write ideas, theories, memories or whatever that relates back to the pinpoint. It is uniquely mine as it would be uniquely yours should you be doing the writing. Comparing notes with each others ideas holds an interest for some readers. Or perhaps not.

I don’t know why people read my words. It has always been a mystery to me. But oddly it pleases me. I don’t feel alone in the world knowing someone is reading my stuff. I wish this exercise were somehow more of a two way street, but it isn’t. I get some comments on the blog but very few considering the number of posts (1250) and the number of reader hits (73,000). I think only 119 comments have been received in the four years of the blog. This does not constitute a two way channel of communication!

My pinpoint is momentary in time, of course. It also explains why I can have so many ideas about so much that seemingly is the same. It isn’t the same. Each moment conjures its own milieu. It is the playing field of thought. And that is what I write about.

For some reason it doesn’t bore me. I hope it doesn’t bore you. If my readership disappears perhaps that is a sign of boredom? Ah yes. Of course!

Until then, I will continue with my mission: making sense out of the nonsensical. Somehow we each do this. Most of us don’t write about it, though. I wonder why?

Maybe that’s the subject of the next blog post?

September 8, 2015

[Note: posts currently are 1800 and readership nearly 200,000]

September 8, 2017