Ovaries, Oysters, and Toads

I knew I would write a blog the day I realized my Facebook shares about horse ovaries, rocky mountain oysters, and guys who irritate witches and consequently get turned into toads were getting lots more traction from friends than my pontifications about climate disaster, political disaster, religious disaster, or just disaster disaster.

I know Facebook is supposed to be about birthday parties and catching up with girlfriends who dumped you 40 years ago and scores of witty, inspiring slides quoting gurus who got their ideas originally from the back of a cereal box or maybe from watching Oprah or perhaps by lifting it from an ancient text that most people don’t take the time to read. And horse ovaries and toads. I could see the pretentious, overly serious stuff I was laying out required a different playing field.

So here I am, blogging, for goodness’ sake, sans oysters.

A Facebook friend recently posted that she was “blocking anyone who spews partisan bullshit until next year” and I laughed to myself because I figured she had already blocked me years ago for this or that. Next year is here, and it won’t be any different either.

And it’s true, Facebook is a lousy delivery system for any kind of deeper discussion about anything. It’s personally impersonal. Impersonally personal. Not a place to go too deep. It’s not set up for essays and assays but for forays, small excursions into the intimate without the gear to travel far off the beaten path or down into the abyss and back. It’s a marvelous place to guilt people into cutting and pasting things (but don’t just share), or for “can I get a like” for this malady or that cute pup. How valuable are a lottery-sized number of “likes” that have been dragged out of people?

Still, I mightily appreciate the intent. And I salute support for others during what many see as calamitous times.

More important, Facebook is an invaluable place to stay connected with friends and family. It’s a place, our family has found, where tons of people can heap lots of love and support on those who need it desperately.

So here I am. Blogging. Stretching into unknown territory. Testing my ability to write something worthy of anyone’s attention, and to do it regularly. We shall see. We shall see.

I’m interested in exploring how we can live our lives with more meaning, more depth, and more joy. We live in a world that feels like it is being experienced increasingly on the surface. We skim for news on the internet, accept what one pundit or another declares to be true, rush from one meeting to being a cabbie for the kids and then jump back online to check out what is happening with the Kardashians (or name your favorite reality show). We might have booked a flight or booked out of the office or listened to the Book of Secrets, but the last book we read was in college.

We are busy, busy, in a tizzy, tizzy.

The focus of these essays will be profound living and we will explore what that means and how to move in that direction. For the moment, it just means deepening. Deepening all aspects of our lives, over time.

How about living a life more caring than carry out, more bottomless than bottomless fries, and more unbeatable than an unbeatable Black Friday sale price? We’ll travel this path together. I’ll tee up the discussion and then we’ll learn from each other, from our own experiences, our own heartbreaks, and our own victories.

I don’t have a lot of answers, but I have plenty of questions, and I’m curious about so much. I hope you’ll join the conversation.