An Exception to the Rule.

Regular (hah!) readers of my blog will notice a lack of activity from November 2012 until nowish (January 2015). Pretty big gap. In that time I switched schools, earned my Masters degree, and became a father. It was pretty busy – but full of bloggable moments. So why the dry spell?

I generally don’t blog about my everyday life. I tried it once, and I couldn’t keep it up. There is something so tedious about rehashing what happened to me during the day that I end up quitting after one or two. I tried to keep a journal in high school – and a week later, threw it away. I can’t do it.

So why have a blog? It’s a kind of safety net, I guess. I like that it’s there. I like knowing that if I ever wanted to blog about something, I could. This is also why I don’t pay for a custom URL – sparsely-updated safety nets don’t deserve having money thrown at them.

Of course not enjoying writing about my everyday life means I have to come up with other things to blog about. Well, when I started this blog way back in September 2013 (mostly because I wanted a new email and hadn’t considered the possibility that deleting my old one rather than just sort of deactivating it would eliminate my access to everything liked to that email account – like my old blog, for example), I promised to “focus more on cooking and projects, and less on stupid posts about my life that no one really cares about anyway.”

Wise words.

So the things I usually feel like blogging about are honestly the types of things I would read about. I often search online for recipes – I hardly use cookbooks anymore since there is so much online. And every so often when I do write something creatively, it usually winds up on here – especially when it was written specifically for this blog (thanks 24HBD). I like to write about things I create, because it’s a break from the usual for me. It’s like, hey – I did a thing, so look at the thing I did!

The focus of this blog has widened a bit, I would say. It’s not all recipes and projects anymore – I started (and then took a 2.5 year break from) posting academic papers from college that I really enjoyed writing/re-reading. The kinds of things I don’t want to just drop in a folder and forget – I like to relive them, and then force my friends and family to live them as well.

Really, looking back through all the posts on this blog I can see that they are all a) recipes, b) building projects, c) creative projects (improv included!), or d) photography stuff. There are a few posts slipped in there about vacations and opinions and whatever, but most of what I post seems to be stuff I make.

Except for this post. Aren’t you glad you read it?

The Downfall of the Family Callahan

Here you go, Koscielny. I wrote you a dang sestina. I used a random word generator to choose my six words, which are:

A) suspicion

B) tea

C) burying

D) bottom

E) estate

F) insisting

So here you go. Years late, and generally unintelligible, because sestinas are awkward and horrible. Hope you're happy.

The Downfall of the Family Callahan

Among the family grew a great suspicion.

Sideways glances whilst sipping at their tea.

Seen silhouetted by moonlight, burying

Objects unknown on cliff top from bottom

Was assumed to be among their own estate.

(Though innocence was all they were insisting.)

Interesting to note the insisting

Parties, mostly first to cast suspicion,

Were family leaders of the fine estate.

A family fortune made by selling tea

Greedily squandered from top to bottom

While arguing on who they would be burying.

Quickly, a note on who was burying

Family treasures, they would be insisting

Once great wonders rotting in the bottom

Of pits dug, while avoiding suspicion,

By not the owners of Callahan Tea,

But by ones taking care of the estate.

For all while upkeeping the estate

Despite the family’s attempts at burying

The help from public eye, they grew the tea

And cleaned the land. So through their insisting

Of effort they were giving, suspicion

Landed among the top, not the bottom.

Now the treasure rotting in the bottom

Of pits on cliff-top grounds of the estate,

Needed to be moved without suspicion,

So night found them undoing the burying

Already undertaken while insisting

That fortunes lie in gold, not in tea.

The family in the morning found the tea

untended, and searching the cliff bottom

found the wreckage of the help. Insisting

upon finding the wealth of their estate

They looted the bodies before burying

Finding nothing confirmed their old suspicions.

For all the suspicions of the family of Callahan Tea,

Their wealth still went out to sea, burying itself on the bottom.

But for the bribes of a rival estate, good fortune would be all they were insisting.