I'm trying to blog daily. Many people ask me, "Why?" (Well, at least one other person, and I ask myself, so that's 'many', for small values of 'many.')

This is a small blog site. I don't feel 'lost in the crowd' like I do at LiveJournal. I like the balance this puts between format and function. The site and basic templates are minimalistic. (You can call it ugly if you wish, I don't care -- I am trying to focus more on what I write than how it looks.)

I try to write daily as a way of 'carving out time' for myself. It's a form of meditation. Either a topic seizes me, or I try to marshall my thoughts around a theme as I write. Either way, it's an exercise in cognition, in communication.

Again, it's function and form. I am aware I have a decent vocabulary, a varied selection of syntax. I can probably adopt different voices, styles. My spelling is not great, and I sometimes miss words in my rush to commit ideas to letters.

That's all presentation. I claim to be a writer, so I must keep my tools at least free of rust by using them daily. I claim to be a sentient, so I try to find opportunity to use that sentience to produce something.

I also claim to be pragmatic, so I know these meanderings are not precious unto themselves, but I find the exercise to be worth doing.

After all, as rhubarb's banner reminds us, we are what we do repeatedly. Not merely who we claim ourselves to be.

Excellence, then, is not a single act but a habit.