Call Me Ishmael….

It is not down on any map; true places never are.”

— Herman Melville.

Starting a new blog seems an odd play for me. After all, I’ve been published many times in other venues and would have a much larger following right away if I chose to simply resume writing about, say, the NBA.

Honestly, though, writing about sports seems to be akin to throwing a glass of water into the ocean and seeing if anyone notices. While I do have unique ways of looking at the sport I covered professionally for two decades, pretty much every kid with a blog is writing about sports. There is simply no need for one more person to do so…at least not me.

So why start a blog? Can I possible say something no one else is saying? Who will want to read it? Will it resonate with anyone? Blah, blah, blah…these are all the questions that have kept me from starting. The reason I am now, nonetheless, sitting at my keyboard after spending an hour with a very patient technical support specialist, is simply because I can’t do otherwise. Writers write.

The title of my blog is based not on Melville’s famous character from Moby Dick, but on a slightly more obscure character from Daniel Quinn’s fabulous book, Ishmael. It’s a book that more or less saved my life when I was in my mid-twenties; it certainly saved my sanity. The intention of my blog, then, is to look at random aspects of our culture and attempt to look at them from the perspective of Quinn’s extraordinary protagonist.

Maybe someone (besides you and I) will read this…maybe they won’t…and I have to say I don’t really care. I’m writing this for me, for my sanity, and if it resonates with others, well, wonderful!

Thanks for reading! Let the adventure begin!

—- Bill