Kurt-ronicling For Posterity

2014. A new year. As in the past, I have made the requisite number of doomed resolutions. To lose weight. To send Christmas cards earlier. To finally finish Ulysses. It didn’t take a lot of time: I just copied and pasted most from my last list (not 2013, but 2010). The terrible truth is that I’m not half the pessimist I claim to be. This is the year I’ll keep the promises I made to myself.

A new resolution, though, is to be faithful to my blog. Part of the reason is self-indulgence: I’m very American in my beliefs that I think differently than others, that I’ve had experiences that are hard to appreciate, and that I have important lessons to share with the world. There’s a second motive, too: I’m hoping it will help me clarify my own thinking about the world and how I fit into it. Good writing is concise, and being concise means distilling complex thoughts down to their essence. Too often when I’m talking, I feel like I’ve made the tough stuff sound tough. It’s time to make them sound simple.

And there’s a third motive: to leave a record of my evolution behind for my kids. My dad passed away last year, and one the issues I’ve grappled with is how poorly I understood him. I know the chronology, how he grew up in northern Minnesota, made his way to Minneapolis and Chicago and Santa Monica before returning to Minnesota. I rarely knew what was going on in his head, though. He seemed to hate being a father, yet never missed my soccer games. He ran all the people he loved out of his life while lamenting his loneliness. I remember seeing him weep after my mom passed away, and I still wonder whether he was crying for her or himself.

But I feel like I know him a little better now because I found his journals after cleaning out the house. They chronicle his thoughts starting when he was just about my age now. They aren’t lengthy, but they’ve given me a much deeper appreciation of what he endured in his life (so many moments where all he had was the money in his pocket!). Maybe I can achieve the same for my own kids, once they hit their 30s, and wonder what the hell their old man was thinking when he ____. Here’s to trying!

Hope you're as excited after I go nuts, Emmett!