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A lady at my local club, of Toastmasters International, told me something once. This when every speech and meeting role is evaluated. “I like how, if you don’t have anything to say, then you go, “I’ve got nothin’!”
Or was she talking about our mass evaluations? I certainly won’t talk if everything relevant has already been said, no talking just for my appearance’s sake. Surely, in that case, staying silent is an integrity thing.
As for my blog, my life this week has been sidetracked. No essays, no fiction. But my peers are writing! So this week I won’t slot in any placeholders. No, if I haven’t done the work then I’ll remain silent.
Maybe today’s blank blog page will motivate me in the coming days. I’ll let you know.
Sean Crawford
On the mortal plain,
November,
2021
Blog Notes: In today’s news I see that Prince Harry warned the head of Twitter just a day before the capital riot in D.C. that cost lives. It was only yesterday that, to last week’s blog, I added Paul Graham’s footnote to my essay where an author is being harsh about the horrid, terrible unAmerican unfairness of the people on Twitter. So here’s that note, for those who missed it yesterday. From Graham’s essay on Earnestness:
QUOTE It’s interesting how many different ways there are not to be earnest: to be cleverly cynical, to be superficially brilliant, to be conspicuously virtuous, to be cool, to be sophisticated, to be orthodox, to be a snob, to bully, to pander, to be on the make. This pattern suggests that earnestness is not one end of a continuum, but a target one can fall short of in multiple dimensions.
Another thing I notice about this list is that it sounds like a list of the ways people behave on Twitter. Whatever else social media is, it’s a vivid catalogue of ways not to be earnest. UNQUOTE
