Why this blog is private

I air opinions here about people they'd, I'm sure, rather not see.

And I need to examine them and see what these opinions say about me.

You already know about my (still unchanged) negative views of Bennie D and his "insufferably pompous" writing. (For example, on a semiformal site like Substack, do you really need to have multiple footnotes? Can you...y'know...not edit down your thoughts so they are more streamlined or incorporate them more organically, like the editor you are?) So I will not expound on him.

On a related note, I'm more and more concerned that, should I ever pick up Infinite Jest, I'll be overwhelmed by both the book and its footnotes. From that perspective, a book like that would be possibly ideally read on my Note Air 3C, whose reading platform opens up footnotes into a floating window that opens right by the footnote number, then disappears when you touch the screen again.

See how easy that was, Ben? Back to the subject at hand.

Another person has recently come up to bristle my hair a bit. I've known her from afar for years. The lexicographer Kory Stamper, she of the vivid magenta hair. Professional, assiduous, and a great wit, as you would expect a Merriam-Webster lexicographer to be. She penned Word by Word, a page-turning memoir of her time as a lexicographer, with each chapter devoted to a single word and its link to her lexicographical experience. She's now come out with a new book called True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink. It, too sounds, fun.

And yet...her mien just grates. Just like B. Dreyer's does. Seeing her pictures, watching her talk...it's...perhaps not as insufferable as his gestalt, but it's up there. She has this more-erudite-than-thou look that I cannot abide, that screams "I'm better than you, and you will never match up, so don't even try." I've read her work with a jaundiced, resentful eye. Why is she the lexicographer? Why am I not up there? Obviously, because reasons. The beginning of Word by Word details her background and her pursuit of the lexicographical life, and it is not a life one idly toys with. The fact that she grew up in Denver, making another parallel I can inevitably draw and find myself short on makes it worse. Jacques. Molly. Kory. Why can't my name fit in there and complete that tetraptych?

Well...by now, by my age of 51, I know that it was not in the cards, that being the country's top lexicographer was not a pursuit I seriously considered until it was too late.

Back to things: Benjamin Dreyer. Kory Stamper. Jacques Bailly. Peter Sokolowski. By now, my name just doesn't fit in there. And at my age, perhaps it doesn't need to.

Man Manqué

This is just another in a long line of litanies wherein I bemoan my inability to match up despite my attempts, where this square peg doesn't fit in the round hole, where the phrase man manqué just feels like it applies too well. Is it because expectations were built up too high for me? Quite possibly. Then again, what I accomplished in the short time before college was pretty damned impressive. As my college collapse proved, it just was not sustainable. In the time since, I've lived a life often punctuated by hesitating before seizing opportunities. I have to trust that my body considered them foolhardy, and that it was warning me that it could not handle what it was being asked to do. My resume is pretty bereft, pretty quiet.

Well, enough on that. I didn't mean to go that deep. Let's move to more shallow—more helpful—waters.

Editing?

I've already written about this. So...I'm back at this well. Why? It feels more significant this time around. I'm dragging my feet on getting work in this realm. To be sure, I'm dragging my feet on writing about it too, right now...

...and hours later, this post stands, still uncompleted. More later, perhaps.