Welcome!

This is a new adventure for me.

Or is it?

When I emailed a co-worker about starting a blog, I mentioned that I wanted to start writing again. She told me that she didn't know that I was a writer. My first reaction was, "well, I'm not a writer and never have been." But that's not quite true. I've spent the better part of the last 19 years as a consultant in the area publishing technology. This means that I read very dry technical books, travel all over the world, listen to people talk about how they create very dry technical books, then write reports for them on how they can create those very dry technical books easier and repurpose the content faster and cheaper.

I've had the opportunity to work on fairly typical publications that most people are familiar with such as software technical manuals, school text books and tests, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and government publications. I've also got to work on more exotic projects like aircraft maintenance manuals from commercial and military aircraft to rockets and even the space shuttle. In every case I needed to communicate, most often in writing, be it a sales proposal to a recommendation for a system design.

But I never really thought of that as writing. There is creativity involved and plenty of opportunity to exercise your powers of persuasion, but your rhetorical devices are certainly limited. In my current gig I find that I'm not writing as much as in years past and I feel less for it. To a certain extent, I don't feel as smart as I did 10 years ago. Is this because I don't write as much as I did before? I think so.

But recently I started writing again in a way. I found my self getting engaged in long threads on facebook. It wasn't structured and it wasn't all that lengthy, but I could feel my brain working again, and I liked it. So I decided I would start a blog. If I had more sense, I would have started a technical blog to shamelessly promote myself. But I wanted to go another way and this is it.

I'm not sure where this is going to go, but I'm going to give it a go. I'm the father of two children that came to my wife and I through adoption, so I'm sure I will write about the experience. I have also been working on my own genealogy, so thoughts on history and family float at the top of my brain often, so I'm sure you'll be able to read about these topics here as well. Religion and politics will certainly round things out since I'm concerned about the world my children will inherit from me and I get passionate about some things from time to time. OK, you got me, I'm almost always passionate about religion and politics and I probably was even before I had kids, but I guy can rationalize, can't he?

So stick around and read if you want. My first real post will be about how I came to be known as the Dancin' Hippie. It happened 23 years ago this fall. I'm not sure it ever fit me, but perhaps that is what makes it fit so well, especially today.

--DH