Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Sunday musings… A New Home

With the inaugural post here on Random Thoughts on April 4, 2009 I became a writer. It doesn’t take very much to be a writer, you know. A bit of free time and either a blank piece of paper or an empty draft space on a computer is the table stake. As soon as you mark that paper or hit the first key…SHAZAM!…you’re a writer. You may be very good, able to carve out  something that looks an awful lot like art. Or not. It doesn’t really matter, you see. If you write then ipso facto, you are a writer.

Now whether or not you are any good, or whether or not what you write has any value outside of what you, the writer, get out of it is another issue entirely. Why do you write? For whom are you writing? To whom, if anyone, are you writing? All of these questions may or may not be important, but the reality is that they only might become important if anyone other than you reads what you have written. If you write it is reasonable to presume that you, like me, get some benefit from the act of the writing. Beyond that we move into the murky world of motives and mercantilism, and since this little space is simply an extension of the chaos inside my little “Restless Mind” I will just leave your own “beyond” to you.

Over the years I have written in several places for several reasons to several audiences. Today marks the return home for all of my thoughts save for those in my professional world of eye care (which may also have a tiny place here as well). Some of you  stumbled upon my alter ego, “bingo”, in the fitness world where I have written “Sunday musings…” for some 10 years or so. Writing to the CrossFit community as a way to thank them, and CrossFit itself, for giving me a place to continue my life as an athlete, each Sunday I have tried to add a bit of thoughtfulness to our shared physical pursuits. “Sunday musings…” has often found itself here, and those essays and little thoughtlettes have occasionally gone on to become some of my better pieces when I gave them a longer look. “Into the Light” remains one of my favorite essays, and where that one piece has sent me both as a writer and a human being has been simply extraordinary.

Why now? Why bring everything home to “Random Thoughts”? Two things, really. First, the world is a whole lot more complex, and sadly much less kind and friendly than it was when I started talking to my fellow CrossFitters so long ago. Like the greater world at large there is at least as much emphasis on what separates us as that which we share. There one no longer writes on the equivalent of a chalk board at a commune of like-minded fitness “infidels” but rather under the watchful eyes of a grown-up digital company that acts to protect itself in a highly competitive business world. Mind you, this is neither good nor bad, it is simply the way of the world as it is today.

I envisioned myself writing “Sunday musings…” in the living room or while sitting at a dining room table in the “CrossFit home”. Everything I wrote came through a kind of filter that emanated from that scenery. I strove to be courteous, to write as if I was speaking as a guest at a party or dinner. One must be ever and always kind to one’s host, no? It’s not so much that I have the urge or the need to change what I write or how I say it, only that it now feels more like I’m sitting in the outer offices of a company with whom I do business, complete with everything that we have all come to associate with that. It’s hardly a CrossFit thing; take a look at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Heck, in my professional writing I have to self-censure because people read my drivel and are foolish enough to make business decisions based on my ramblings and my rants.

Why do I write? As I said in the very first post here I have found it very helpful in more ways than I can count to simply empty some of the space in my very restless mind so that there is room for growth. That kinda answers the next question, doesn’t it? I am writing for myself. Working out what I am thinking, and more so what I am feeling, has been incredibly helpful as I have navigated my little life’s journey. Sitting down to write every Sunday has imposed a tiny bit of discipline, not unlike having a workout schedule. Even if my life at any given moment was too whatever to write, each Sunday I would do whatever it took to write a little something. Again, not unlike going to the gym, the more I’ve done it the better I’ve gotten at doing it.

Which leaves only the question of whom it is I am writing to. It is flattering beyond belief that there is even one person who reads anything that I’ve written, let alone finds something in it that speaks to them. The fact is, I would be doing this even if you, a reader, wasn’t there. That you are, and more, that every now and again something I’ve written is in some way meaningful to you, well, that is just a wonderful gift from you to me. The equivalent of putting your hand in the front pocket of your jeans and finding a dollar bill. You can’t plan your budget around that, you know, but it makes you smile every time it happens.

“Sunday musings…” has become a tiny part of who I think I am when I look in the mirror. Beginning today it comes home the “Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind”. With a little bit of luck I will continue to sit down each Sunday morning and empty out a little corner of my internal hard drive. If some part of that moves you in any way, well, that will be that much better.

I’ll see you next week…

3 Responses to “Sunday musings… A New Home”

  1. December 24th, 2018 at 2:14 pm

    Dave T. says:

    Bingo, what was the date of your “Into the Light” essay?

  2. December 24th, 2018 at 7:43 pm

    drwhite says:

    Hi Dave! “Into the Light” is actually the title of the chapter in the book my kids published for me a few years ago. Here on the blog it’s “Shades of Gray”. Cheers!

  3. December 24th, 2018 at 7:44 pm

    drwhite says:

    2011/04/21!
    –bingo

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