Remember the days of grade school when everyone insisted that you spend 1080 hours of your year in the presence of a certified instructor and general giver of knowledge? Yeah. It got worse. College was a false reprieve from this structured lifestyle because BAM you graduate and (if you’re lucky) you find a job and all of a sudden, everyone now insists you spend 2080 (more or less) hours of your year fulfilling duties and completing tasks. When you’re young and in grade school, an unexcused absence can put a real dent in your grades in a class here and there – but if you start to rack ’em up, all of your grades and thus your GPA and perhaps your entire life will suffer as a consequence. Heaven knows if you do the same at a job, the end result will likely be termination from your position and again, full-life suffering could commence.

On the contrary, if you write a blog, consistently posting ten to fifteen times a month and steadily building an audience, then BAM life happens and you go from twelve posts a month to four, no one much cares. The consequences are minor. Sure, readership dwindles. But isn’t that all vanity in the end? Aren’t I doing this for the writing practice and to entertain those who have a mild interest in my life? It’s easy to convince myself that it’s better to post nothing at all than drivel about the wonders of unemployment or the woes of financial ineptitude. My readers will thank me for not subjecting them to these pointless and frequently humorless topics.

However, I think in not forcing myself to post fifteen to twenty times a month, I am indulging my own belief that if I have nothing interesting happening in my life, I am unable to write about anything interesting. Not so. There are countless fascinating subjects just waiting for a humorous treatment by yours truly. It would expand my creativity to push the limits in this regard. Having a funny experience is like a gift. All I have to do is transcribe events for the enjoyment of all those who come here to read. It’s not hard. It’s not a particular challenge. Don’t I want to grow? Granted, I did push myself to begin with by starting this blog, but I don’t want to stagnate. It’s time to push a little harder.

I hereby reinstitute the policy of the Unexcused Absence. The consequences might be self-imposed, but I expect my own disappointment to be an effective deterrent to skipping out. Liz(Patty)Harrell only ever ditched yoga class and I don’t think my personality has changed that much since high school. Fifteen to twenty posts a month! Certainly not outside of my capabilities.

Though, if you have any suggestions for topics, I’m more than happy to have them 🙂 Heck, the more random, the better. For instance, Justin Timberlake just came to mind. I could write volumes… and they would be very funny volumes indeed.