The Ground Rules

I have a very simple goal with this blog: write something every day. I have known for a very long time that I harbored secret and sometimes not-so-secret ambitions of becoming a professional writer. Unlike many such wanna-bes, I have actually been published before and know that I have the talent and the skills to make that dream a reality. What I have lacked is the guts, the will, and the habits. Which is to say, most of what it takes to be a successful writer.

So, rather than continue to wallow in rationalizations, I am trying to flush out this dream. Either I will have what it takes to continue this work, or I won't. If I don't keep it up, I can just stop pretending, go back to being a reasonably happy software consultant, and stop believing some work of genius will magically jump out of my head fully formed some day.

So, here are the rules:
1) At least one post every day. No expections for theme, length, coherence, or quality; just a daily post, come hell or high water.
2) Comments are welcome. Arguments and disagreements are especially welcome, because they give me something to which I can react, which is much easier to write than just cooking something up from scratch.
3) WARNING! Occasionally I write about technical programming stuff. This is not just an attempt to fill space, nor is the intended direction of the whole blog. It's just that sometimes I happen to figure something out that's difficult and non-intuitive, and it's something that I desperately wish someone else had shared online so I didn't have to work it out myself. I have found so many valuable tidbits from other blogs and other online venues that I feel the need to give back to the world. Thanks to Google, I know that the five people in the whole world who might be interested will find it, and be glad. (Which may, I'm afraid, be more people than those who read anything else I might post.) If I wind up writing a lot of these, I might start a different blog with that focus. If you're not one of those five people, and for some bizarre reason you actually read these posts sequentially, just blip right over them and forgive me for being such a geek.
4) I'm not revealing my identity right now, just because I don't know what I'm going to think about this blog, and I'd rather not have it google up under my name at the moment. That being said, I have no vested stake in hiding who I am, and I will freely include details from my life that will identify me, at least to those who know me.
5) As the title of the blog suggests, these posts will only be lightly edited, if that. I _d0_ tend to edit anything I write (I re-read even the most mundane emails and make changes) , but I am fighting paralysis-of-analysis in most of my writing and I am trying to get in the habit of getting something 90% there and then just letting it go.

So, here goes. I profer my deeds to oblivion.