The Blinking Cursor

If you're a blog writer, you know the curse of the blinking cursor (sounds like a Hardy Boys Mystery Title: The Missing Cursor of the Curser. Lovable Chet will inevitably get lost or tangled up as the case comes to its dramatic denoument, but none the less the Hardy Boys will solve the case, get the girls, receive a rousing pep talk and pat on the back, and already look forward to the next case inadvertently: "The Boys couldn't imagine, but their lives were soon to become even more complicated in The Mystery of the Violet Fire Poker.")

(I have, apparently, finally cracked...)

The cursor just sits there, blinking at you on an empty entry page, on and off, saying "Hey! What are you doing? Why aren't you writing? I'm waiting!" Now, I admit that it is somewhat unusual to hear the voice of an electronically generated series of binary digits; however, the fact is that every day is exactly like that. No blinking cursor, of course (Although that would be something: get up in the morning, go outside, look up, and see this giant blinking cursor in the sky above you, or worse, see it typing) but we do get a blank sheet of paper called twenty-four hours.

But unlike my blog entries, there is no delete key. I can't go back and correct the misspellings and errors I find once I post it. I cannot write or rewrite something to change the impact it has on another: once something is done, it's done. It becomes another page in the book of our lives, added to the binder awaiting our final entry and subsequent turning in and grading.

Yet, like a blog, every day is a fresh page. Every day, I get to to make another entry.

Someone asked me once why I like to write, especially because I don't get (formally) reimbursed for it. I admit that I write a lot, both here and personally for my own consumption, but the point of fact is that I can't help but write. Even in my jobs, even for things that I was not necessarily schooled in, I write. For me, in a real way, to write is to live.

But really, to live is to write. We don't all put alphanumeric characters onto a page, but we do put our deeds into the lives of others, influence the lives of others by our thoughts, words, and actions, and create a book that will be read by those who come after us (your children take the volume with them) as well as in eternity (where, in the biggest bookshow ever, God will display everyone's volumes).

Yes, I write this in the context of yesterday, where I was able to have perspective and have a number of people comment about my attitude and in at least once case say "Yeah, I know God has a plan and will provide - I just don't know what it is yet." I can assure that yesterday at my company, that was a view voiced by precisely no-one else. But I also write it in context of explaining to An Clann that I was laid off yesterday, that I had a sense of peace and God with me, and that God would provide for us.

Every day in every way, we write. What did you fill your empty screen with today?