My Number One First Post Ever

I don’t know why I’m here, in these United States, on this Planet Earth, but I’m trying to figure it out. I take solace in the Mary Schmich essay “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” from The Chicago Tribune, printed June 1, 1997: “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with you life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.” (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html) But I’m 51. I’m okay not knowing the big unknowables, the god universe stuff. But this body, this mind, I want to put them to good use in my remaining ticks of time. I believe a life should have purpose and meaning. What is the thing I was meant to do? How can I find it and lose myself in service to it? I guess that’s what this blog is about.

Why “blunderbuss”? Besides liking the sound of the word, it has three definitions as far as I can tell, and that’s how I’ll loosely organize these posts.

Thundering

A blunderbuss was a kind of musket popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. It wasn’t a particularly accurate weapon – it was the spray bottle of guns - but they say it was relatively easy to load. Although I’m not a fan of any gun, I like the metaphor because I see this blog as a way to broadcast ideas: short essays, stories, reactions and rants, bits from journals, and god knows what else to try to make sense of things. Hopefully, no one gets hurt.

Blundering

The second meaning of “blunderbuss” is someone who blunders, a ham-handed fool. This is where I’ll share my key idiotic missteps. It seems to me that most blogs are written by beautiful, successful people who have all the answers (along with alarming marketing savvy). Reading their smart posts makes me feel dumber by the sentence. This isn’t that. Here, I’ll share exactly how dumb I’ve been in my fifty tours around the sun to make you feel smarter!

Wondering

Self-pleasure. That’s what the Urban Dictionary has to say about blunderbuss. Let’s not think about that so much. But isn’t there an element of navel-gazing and wonder for anyone who chooses to blog? Still, if an idea has helped me successfully navigate from point A to point B, or feel good about something, why not share? I hope it won’t sound self-congratulatory; that’s the tone that turns me off.

Maybe you’re in a similar boat. Maybe it would be more fun to float together.