Hello? Hi? Is Anybody There?

Golly, when did the wallpaper get changed to this very innocuous light blue fluff? At least I fixed the text so it's black on white. More readable and all that, you know. I've learned a little about writing with accessibility on the Web.

So I've been paying a lot of attention to that daily time-stealing, friend-conversing, mainly-used-by-my-generation face thing. A lot of attention, as in, several years' worth of attention. One lonely blog post here last year. Yikes. I'm sorry! I think often about blogging, but it takes so much time and energy to write up and edit (and edit, and re-edit) multiple paragraphs here. Meanwhile, on that other platform, there are pretty pictures and greetings from friends and more pictures, and I can scroll through a hundred short pieces in an hour and feel as though I've caught up with my people.

But this blog thing has value. Sure, the posts really are short, and they're not deeply personal, but I can pretend that hundreds of kind strangers (or no one at all) will read and nod in understanding. Is there still a place for blogs any more? My, how quickly things change.

I'm blogging for work, though only occasionally. I'm supposed to be able to post book suggestions -- not reviews, exactly, because I don't think I should say that something is so awful that no one should pick it up. I wanted to do this because it's writing, and I'm a writer. (Being a writer, in this case, does not necessarily mean that anyone will choose to read my writings. But I like to write.) Once I got all trained and instructed in the professional aspects of writing for work, I did a few posts... and lost my motivation. Crickets.

Recently, however, I re-discovered my muse and became re-energized to blog again. My alter ego, my writer-side, was right there in front of me all the time. I just hadn't been looking to him for help, because this was supposed to be professional, you know, for my career, writing. This muse of mine, you see, has a sweet face, a black and pink mottled nose, and a long wagging tail. It's Polo. It's so much easier to imagine my dog's responses to things than to write my own highly edited thoughts. Polo is straightforward, honest, and only a little bit cynical about human nature. He's kind and witty. And he uses a simpler vocabulary than I can muster. (Another rule about writing for the work blog is to keep it very readable for English language learners. I don't mean to sound high-falutin' -- it just happens to be how the words fly off my fingers.)

So, I'm taking my dog to work these days, hoping he can get away with writing book stuff for me. We'll see how it goes. At least 30% of the blog posts on our website are read by fellow staff members, and everything is carefully reviewed as soon as it's published. If Polo isn't allowed on that blog, at least he can come back here to lend a paw regularly.

Thanks for checking in. I'll try to get back here more often. Mostly, I'll try to write. Somewhere. Like this guy on the side of a building at the University of Washington. Because he's been at it a long time, and he isn't finished yet.