this is not a blog

except, it is. But it's also an exploring expedition, an adventure. It's a small attempt to find the meaning in the odd moments of the crossroads in which the paths of the universe collide. It's a fieldjournal for my life as a cultural pioneer.

The genre of blogging was a huge paradigm buster, mixing the fields of social science, journalism, and computer science with the common journal. In the resulting social order, blogging services were created to be free to all, and--more importantly--usable for all. The unit of power, instead of a dollar, became the link. A culture hungry for a voice has seized blogging as their medium. Politicians, clergy, teachers, students, comedians, teenagers professors, techies, engineers, artists, writers, work-at-home moms, stay-at-home dads, and even the not-exactly-homeless populate the burgeoning land known as the blogosphere. Together, they [we] represent the largest population of individuals not defined by a border. But where are we going with this?

The time has come for the genre to meet the fate that all paradigm busters must by design meet: this too must be busted. Here's our Kant moment: are we an enlightened age, or merely living in an age of enlightenment? By naming the bubble, the paradigm is busted. Pop. Welcome to the Blogging Age.

Here's my place to explore our paradigm. Is it possible that blogs are the point of the entire [western?] literary cannon? It must be so! The linear progression (at least by chronological terms) of all that's ever been thought is otherwise a meander, and we aren't so much the inheritors of the collective advances of the human race as we are bumps on a log. The Buddhist in me likes the idea of being a bump on a log, a home for a spot of moss and a nice meal for the grub. The rest of me, consumed in competition with my own potential self, keeps my eyes on the horizon. Move west, young [wo]man!

I share today as my birthday with Jean-Paul Sartre, who violently tore open his paradigm by declaring that nothing means anything. We forget, though, that his discovery was a rally cry for humanity to give meaning to our own existence. And here we are back at the Buddha. I've heard you can tell if you're in a room full of Buddhist monks by the shoes perfectly lined along the wall. It's not that neatly ordered shoes have an inherently spiritual property, instead, the Buddhist monk (as well as monks of other spiritual traditions) is called to be mindful of all things. To the degree that even taking one's shoes off is thought about. Or, in Sartre's terms, given meaning.

This is my life's desire: to live with meaning, on purpose, to live mindfully. With this blog, I can explore the depths of life, the meanings we are accidentally or mindfully giving to the various aspects of our existence. Even blogging can be mindful and purposeful. Sartre said so!