another thing to think about

If you visit the archives of Steve Vaught's The Fat Man Walking blog, you will see many entries that begin with an apology for not having provided an update in a while. Vaught was very good at expressing whatever was on his mind, but I suspect that he was experiencing something similar to what I've been experiencing: writer's backlog, i.e., the backlog that comes of having too much information to write about.

When you plunge into a project like this, where you're meeting new people and seeing new places almost every day, there's a desire to document every single thing, but there simply aren't enough hours in the day to do that. Inevitably, compromises have to be made; some information is dropped. The story you've been wanting to tell can't be told properly.

Today, for example, I would have liked to snap some pics of the beautiful ladies at the Chrysalis Inn's front desk (and a pic of the equally lovely staffer who helped me out the night I checked in), but this wasn't possible because I was checking out and fully packed: the digicam is safely ensconced in a plastic box, buried deep inside the backpack. Taking it out would have meant unpacking half the contents.

I also still owe you write-ups of my talks in Blaine, and other updates as well. It's frustrating not to have the time-- and energy-- to sit down and write everything out in one fell swoop. As you might imagine, I'm frustrated by the backlog.

So I'm wondering whether it's too much to visit a new religious community every night. While I still hesitate to burden any one community for more than a single night, I think some travel time between places is called for.

If so, this notion has to be passed along from waypoint to waypoint, otherwise people will think they have to find a place that's within a day's walk from them. This goes back to the idea expressed in the previous post: any two major dots can be connected through smaller dots whose only purpose can be as simple as lodging and laundry.

Your thoughts?


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