I have been absent from Phatic Communion for too long now, spending much of my Internet time reading other blogs or posting on the subject of fifth generation warfare at the new cooperative 5GW blog I’ve been hosting: Dreaming 5GW.  The new blog got off to a wickedly good start but has been stagnating lately since, I suppose, there’s only so much that can be said about a dream until you realize that the dream needs to be fleshed out.  Then comes the hard part: of actually operationalizing the thing, making it actionable, etc.  I have contemplated inaugurating the ‘Conspiracy Theories’ category for that blog by introducing a new regular feature of ‘what if’ scenarios of current 5GW activity — what if China’s behind al Qaeda even if neither America nor al Qaeda is aware of the 5GW plan, for instance — and I might just do that in my next post at Dreaming 5GW.  It would inject some entertainment and might be a good brainstorming mode, a kind of roleplay; but on the other hand, it would look loony if it isn’t handled right.  In any case, the movement forward on 5GW is serious and plenty of actual activity on the global stage could well be considered through a 5GW lens — if I had the time, which lately I don’t.

And then there’s the question of Phatic Communion and so many subjects I could address which are not necessarily 5GW-related.  Balance this against the growing feeling that blogging, although perhaps it will be far more important in the future than even supposed by pundits now, is not a cost-effective life strategy for me at this point.  Time is the only really valuable commodity in a person’s life, from which all other values gain worth; and I’ve wasted too damn much being online.  So the ‘blogger lifestyle’ does not really suit me at present, although I have no problem (obviously) investing bits and pieces of Time on blogging.

If I were to show you my private journals from about age 19 through age 23, you’d think, “Good lord, this is banal!” and you’d be right.  Surprise, surprise: not much has changed, except that I stopped writing that stuff long ago.  That’s probably why I’ve spent so much time writing, first, about poetry, and then most recently on politics, cognition, 5GW, etc etc., online — to avoid the banality that is at the heart of me.  But the greatest surprise for me has been in the way that these other pursuits have actually broadened my perspective to a degree that cannot possibly be entirely banal, even if I tried.  It’s a little like the guy with his eyelids stapled open:  no more chance for sweet, myopic, self-obsessed self-importance.

Except of course for posts like this post.  Heh.