From the South Jordan Darlene

Well, blog, here I am again.

First of all, I wanted to report somewhere what I learned yesterday, which is that one of the people who share my name (there's got to be a word for that, right? Like doppelganger, only about names, not looks. Excuse me while I go look it up . . . OK, there really is no word in English for this, unless you want to use namesake, which, although it doesn't TECHNICALLY mean this,  has connotations of one being named in honor of the other) died this week. Google alerts let me know that, according to The Chattanoogan, Linda Darlene Young, 66, of Soddy Daisy, who "loved to croshay," passed away on May 1. I am in love with that town name, Soddy Daisy. A little research tells me that Soddy Daisy is in Tennessee. I have been daydreaming about Soddy Daisy, its willows sweeping the ditchbanks of the backroads, its tight-knit (tight-croshayed?) church community and their covered hot dishes arriving at the back screen-door of Linda Darlene's bungalow. I am also thinking about the age of 66.

I've always sort of thought that someone who dies before 80 is dying early, but after that, "it's all cream." But someone I love is approaching 80 now, and I'm beginning to wonder what a person at that stage feels, when she has been telling herself this all her life. I'm predicting that at that stage, what I'll feel will be pretty tired. I am not afraid of what I will encounter after I die. I don't, however, look forward to the process, especially if it's long and drawn-out. At that age, will life still be sweet to me? Will I be painfully interested in seeing how my grandchildren turn out, involved and invested in their lives? 

But the thing I really need to address here is why I am addressing anything here at all. What a stupid time to be writing a blog, right? I don't fool myself that there is anyone out there interested in reading this. But here it is: because of a religious awakening/identity crisis of sorts that I am currently enjoying, I have decided that it is very important for me to get back in touch with whatever is left of the original, pure impulse and joy of writing. I want to experiment with removing all sense of duty (I must publish or risk losing my job!) and fear (I'm not growing! I'm not pushing myself! I'm not writing every day as I tell my students is so important! I'm absolutely certain that I am not talented in any sense of the word and will never be anything but mediocre!) about my writing and just put some stuff out there. And not on facebook, where it disappears from view as quickly as it disappears from my mind. (Whose view? Maybe just mine. I'm trying not to worry about that, or care.)

Yuck. I feel that a paragraph like the preceding is not much different from that really annoying paragraph most sacrament meeting speakers feel obliged to share about "what I was doing when the first counselor called me to speak." I'm sorry about that. It was boring. I felt it had to be done.

So . . . welcome back to my blog, bots and future self and that one great-great-grandchild who might be interested in family history (I'm picturing Wallace Stegner's historian from Angle of Repose, studying his grandmother while stuck in his wheelchair . . . which, of course, made for a really great book, so there!). Let's see what happens.

(Very appropriate picture because it shows the juxtaposition of my hopeful willingness to engage in technology with my hopeless ineptness at it. Apparently, the right way to take a selfie is to do it so that the camera isn't in the picture. Like, you know, turning the camera around. But I know you know that already.)