Tag, I'm it.

Miss No-H threw down the gauntlet, and said I wouldn't respond. Like the dutiful belligerent she knows me to be, I'll fall for the reverse psychology.

With a catch - My circle of blogs is pretty small, and I think she's tagged most of the ones I know. So I'll do a tag for each reason, but no way I'll have five.

I'll tag the Oracle before someone else does. That's one.

And Cracked. That's two.

Two's all I got - and all I need - I guess.

Top two reasons why I blog:

1) The obvious reason. Dad.

In the weeks after his death, I was short on clarity and the time to say much of anything. Oh, I'd thought about saying something on many occasions. I just never did. Given my history - I'd plotted out a story arc of me retreating further and further into my own head until one day I'd blow up at somebody for not passing the goddamn salt.

In the years prior to 2005, I had written a few essays for nobody in particular and this blog began as just another collection of words sitting on my hard drive.

It was a few weeks after the accident, and I was a mess. Some time after the boy was asleep, I went downstairs, fired up MS word and started typing. The first word that came out of my head was 'Autopilot.' I was going to type a eulogy, at least that's what I think I was going to do. A few hours later, I realized that I was never going to finish. So I made it into a blog.

I still work on the eulogy some days - most times when I'm in the car on the way home - listening to music I should avoid. I envision myself at the service all over again, only this time I'd step up to the podium and say all the things I should have. I write and rewrite paragraphs in my head until they are hopelessly overwrought or until some traffic mishap jolts me back to the present.

I have a few paragraphs I've burnished almost to the point of posting - a virulent defense of my associating dad's death with Katrina, rather than the freak accident that it could easily be classified as. I say them to myself at least once a week - imagining some hapless critic withering under my words as I drive them home with a pile driver.

-and then I think, "never gonna happen." and then I post something about the government.

2) My only other reason is the same as most, I expect. I like to say what's on my mind, and I'm not sure most people enjoy hearing it. Here, I can scream into the void and people can take or leave it. Given the potential audience of a blog like this, and my infrequent update schedule, I have no illusions about what kind of exposure my thoughts will get - but every once in awhile you get a comment or a tag - and that's pretty cool.

Cheers.