Work in Progress
Happy May Day!
The First of May marks different things for different people. In ancient Christian traditions, it is the feast day of Saint Walpurga — an 8th Century abbess whose veneration gave rise to Walpurgisnacht celebrations on her feast day’s eve, for the purpose of heralding the arrival of summer and invoking protection against witchcraft. The Catholic Church today marks May 1 as the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker — honoring the guardian of Jesus, who provided for the Holy Family as a carpenter and serves as a role model and intercessor for those who labor. And, of course, the godless commies use May Day to honor the working proletariat with military parades and such. Then there are May Baskets, which I never really got into as a kid… I remember being bummed one year that I didn’t get any May Baskets, and my Mom made me one but I told her it didn’t count because it was from my Mom. Oof.
But today — May 1, 2023 — I’m marking May Day with the commencement of a building project in my home here in the Morton Meadows neighborhood of Omaha. I’ve hired a crack team of workers to build a third bedroom in the attic space of my little raised ranch house, a project that I’ve been thinking about since buying the house about thirteen years ago. For the next six weeks I expect a daily flurry of building activity here… and since I’m a semi-retired homebody now, I’ll get to hear all the banging and sawing above my head as I do things like write blog entries and read Agatha Christie mystery novels.
This is also the day I’ve chosen to begin building (or perhaps rebuilding) this blog and its associated Web site. Many years ago I wrote a little blog chronicling my occasional observations about the mundanities and minutiae of my life. I created dozens of little essays, many of which are archived somewhere and which may be trotted out in the future if I’m so inspired to revisit the past. I kept up the blog for several years, but eventually got bored with it and decided that sharing my ideas with the world — really, a tiny handful of regular readers — was not the best use of my time. But that was back when I was a busy schoolteacher mired down in lesson plans and grading and pursuing, successively, a master’s degree and school administration certification. Now that I’m a semi-retired man of leisure, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to start writing again on a regular basis.
What do I plan to write, and who is my intended audience? Whatever, and whoever. It used to bother me that I didn’t really have a focus, or much of an audience. I think that’s one reason I stopped blogging. This time around I’m focusing more on the process of writing than on the product. Perhaps eventually I’ll narrow down a focus and function to my literary output (such as it is), but for now I just feel a need to develop the discipline of writing on a somewhat consistent basis. It will be work. I hope it becomes a habit, and a passion. I’ve always enjoyed writing; while cleaning out years of accumulated crap from my attic, I discovered a stash of random things I wrote in school going all the way back to Fifth Grade. (Like, literally wrote out by hand, in the pre-computer days.) If you’re lucky, I may transcribe and post some of that vintage stuff here.
This blog, like my attic, will be a work in progress. What better day to get busy on the work of building than May Day?
ECW 5/1/2023
