Musings of a Compulsive Thinker

Is anyone listening?

In general, as I share my various musings here, I really try to avoid sounding pretentious. I think that sometimes I fail at this goal. Maybe most people have zero interest in what I have to say, or maybe they find me irritating; maybe these and/or other reasons can serve as an explanation for the glaring lack of comments on my posts.

(Am I whining? I'm sorry if I sound like I'm whining. I love to complain, but I hate to sound whiny.)

Pretentiousness is a common pitfall for those who write to a perceived audience. Various people (my mother among them) have related a certain distaste for the writings of Henry David Thoreau, for example, citing an air of pretentiousness as their primary complaint. (Their other complaint, if they make one, usually contains the word "boring.") Admittedly, this may be true; Thoreau often hopped up on his little philosophical soapbox, sometimes entirely for the sake of doing so, and sometimes as an aside in the middle of an exposition on bread-making. In my own way, however, I enjoy these little tangents as well as the more mundane material in which they are couched.

(Yes, I read Thoreau. For fun. I'm one of those people.)

Well, at any rate, I suppose I don't have anything to say that is of great importance; I'm not famous, so there's no celebrity factor to coerce the interest of the masses. You should feel free to take it or leave it, I guess. My family may actually be the only people who ever read this. And, really, I'm okay with that possibility.

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Labels: literature, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 10:01 AM