Yesterday and Today

I suppose the hardest part about writing a daily blog lands on the matters of discipline and free time, both of which, for me and this blog, still exist in their infantile stages. Not to extend excuses--this is hardly a doctoral thesis. I created this blog to challenge myself and, well, maybe I set the initial stakes a little too unrealistically. Nonetheless, this morning I've decided to mull over the best formatting for my forthcoming entries.

The title of each entry will consist of that day's word. Incorporating the definition--which I learned with yesterday's word, "senectitude", is a definite must--tends to create the most problems. Should I provide this at the beginning of the entry, the end, or simply provide a link to the wordsmith.org site? Giving the definition at the very beginning seems a little dry and reminds me of a trite marketing meeting or some kind of hackneyed movie trailer (one of those romantic comedies where a narrator defines the word "love" over quirky scenes of actors slipping down stairs, stealing flowers, and kissing in front of city skylines) . Then again, placing the definition at the end serves virtually no purpose other than to hide potentially valuable information from the reader in order to skirt conforming to---- ahhh, screw it. Let's just see what it looks like.

First Things First

Alright. So I finally created my blog, named it as appropriately as possible, and subscribed to http://wordsmith.org for all my random word-generating needs. The whole process reminded me distinctly of my first venture into the now rigorous and, seemingly, ubiquitous feature directing me to create an apt-and-easy Username and Password for whatever site or service I find timeworthy. These security measures certainly make sense--especially given the prevalence of spamming and identity theft--but circa 1997, as a lad whose primary goals in life centered around concepts like "cool" and "free-throw", the Username and Password presented itself as a nearly insurmountable personal challenge: Write a unique word that represents YOU. Really, to a teenager, demanding a character-specific self-imposed label is like a teacher declaring, "Okay, class. Today I want you to write a one-word personal essay describing all of your talents, interests, and aspirations. It may also include a number. After class, we will read them aloud in social judgment."

It's even more complicated than that, actually. I remember sitting at the public library and sifting through what seemed like a million word combinations, each one more brilliant than the next, each one inevitably already in use by some creative demigod or, worse, some asshole email name collector. In all honesty, I think that the process of creating of my first email address taught me the true lesson of metaphor. My email search could've easily ended with Zach7882@hotmail.com, but I wanted a representation, something that I could write on the back of a notebook that would register a new or immediate recall of me. Something special, something individual, something applicable.

And when all of those were taken, I took a color I liked, something that sounded cool, and separated it with an underscore: sapphire_haze@hotmail.com