It isn’t right! As many of you well know, I post my rambling thoughts or reflections of a day on a regular basis. Actually, the publisher of my book told me not to refer to my writing as “rambling thoughts”. His sage advice was prior to the book’s publication. He said, “I’ve read the draft of your book. It is a disservice to label it as rambling thoughts.” He saw the label as denigrating and said: “Don’t do that.” He added: “I think your book is well thought out.” Of course, he may have said that because he had an interest in getting into my pocketbook. I did subsequently have the book published and to date, I have the world’s largest collection of my book. In fact, I could fill library shelves. So what’s my collection worth? It depends. Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?
I have posted my blog daily for the past 3 ½ plus years. Some folks read what I’ve written regularly. Other folks start and stop. Just yesterday a friend greeted me with the observation that my blogs are too long. In an effort of trying to “go with the flow” and not appear defensive, I responded: “I’ve been told that before. I’m sorry; just read all you want and then stop. He assured me in so many words that when his interest waned, he didn’t read more than he wanted.
I didn’t ask if his observation was more of a reflection of his attention span that the value of my writing, but I did thank him for sharing his observation. Seriously I welcome any and all feedback. I think his summation of my writing was a little overstated, but I wrote it down for later reflection. He said: “Your blog is superfluous nonsense”. That is a twenty-five cent expression if I’ve ever heard one.
Wow! I didn’t see that coming. I’m still letting the term “superfluous nonsense” roll around in my head. Like I said, "I didn’t see it coming", but please don’t think that I can’t think on my feet, because I can. I responded: “I’m writing that down. I think it is blog-worthy.” So my blog today is dedicated to my friend and his summation of my blog. “Superfluous nonsense” is pretty expressive.
This morning as I thought about the term “superfluous nonsense”, another word came to mind. The year was 1964. The word I thought of is “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. That, too, is a mouthful and I take it to mean the opposite of superfluous nonsense. Julie Andrews sang a song by the same name in Mary Poppins. Just for the record, I didn’t see the movie.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious means fantastic or wonderful. It is also the longest word in the English language. It also falls into the category of a nonsense word. Never say I won’t go the second mile in an attempt to cover all the bases. Maybe my friend is right. Maybe it is all superfluous nonsense.
Out of curiosity, I did check Google for the expression “superfluous nonsense”. Interestingly, there is a blog by that title. I gather that the writer is very young. He also may be very smart because the title seems to fit. In one of his blogs he writes: “Two years ago, I turned 22. I spent probably three months leading up to October 1st dreading the date – I was getting too old, and I didn’t want to think about it. There was no anticipation for the event, which is a rare thing for me. Generally any chance to celebrate me is grasped with two hands. Anyway, two weeks out I came to my senses, got stupidly excited and had a fantastic time, got drunk with a bunch of friends and basically loved life”.
Okay, so the point of my blog is that on rare occasion, I can keep it short. Secondly, I was joking in questioning my friend’s attention span and thirdly, I didn’t loose sleep over the “superfluous nonsense” slam. It was strictly coincidental that I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep.
However, I am somewhat concerned that Facebook is not chronicling my timeline correctly. Perhaps, they too, are on the inside track. It could be their passive-aggressive response to “superfluous nonsense.”
All My Best!
Don