Inspiration

I am embarrassed that it has been nearly a year since I last posted on this site. Perhaps I was too angry, too tired, too frustrated, too lazy, too depressed, too medicated, too short of time, too selfish, too self-absorbed, too distracted to spend two minutes to ponder from the prairie. For a year?

I have decided I need to make time again for writing, apart from the volumes I generate at work.

Writing forces one to organize one's thoughts, exercising, training and strengthening the mind in ways that involuntarily lend themselves to enhancing every day's experience. Like a good liberal arts education, committing thoughts to paper (or pixels) demands critical thinking, a skill useful from time to time when away from the keyboard.

Writing serves as a release. The frustrations of being governed in response to Orwellian soundbites passing as political discourse fade with the self-satisfaction realized when publishing reasoned arguments to the contrary.

Writing assuages guilt. I spent this evening with Senator Al Franken. He works so hard to promote policies with which I generally agree, facing intense pressure from the GOP to institute policies I generally loath. I feel guilty that I have not been lending my voice in support of Senator Franken's efforts, apparently content to have others do all the heavy lifting. By writing, I feel like I'm doing my part to move readers in a direction I can support.

The occasion of my opportunity to share time with Senator Franken was a fundraiser at the home of Garrison Keillor, a local writer made good, with, coincidentally, his own history of prairie pondering. It is simply not possible to be in Mr. Keillor's presence, surrounded by his book collection, drawn to his office with its deliciously disheveled desk, awed by his ability to clearly, rationally and effectively communicate a point of view and not feel the urge to try to imitate art.

For me, for you, in appreciation for the public servants like Senator Franken and inspired by Mr. Keillor, our generation's Mark Twain, I am going to give in to the urge and try.

Garrison Keillor's Underwood