To Whom it May Concern

So here I am again.

I doubt I have any readers.  I have no idea if readership even matters.

Screaming into the void has merit though, so…

Dear void,

I have missed you.  What’s it been?  5 years?  Why the last time I saw you, you were this tall!  Life has been crazy and I don’t feel like catching you up on everything.  Instead, I just want to talk about what’s been going on lately.

Through work, I took an online assessment to identify my strengths.  It’s been revealing.  It’s called “StrengthsFinder” or “Clifton Strengths”.  It was created by Don Clifton with massive amounts of research from Gallup.  Today I want to talk about my biggest strength: Ideation.  It’s such a great word.  I am fascinated with ideas and making connections.  And you know what?  Writing is the best way for me to do that. 

I was a geeky, nerdy kid who fell into the job of computer programming and found something I loved more than anything I had ever done.  What’s interesting though is that all the people I work with did substantially better on their math SATs than their verbal.  However, my scores only varied by 10 points and that was in favor of verbal.  My brain is wired for logic, but it’s wired for ideas and concepts and connections.  Numbers are cool and there are beautiful patterns to be found there, but the broadest concepts, even in math, require words and sentences and incredibly thick books to describe them.  So writing helps me understand.  Writing this, right now, is helping me understand.  Do you understand?

I was in the Army Corps of Engineers for 13 years and our motto is “Essayons” and the moment I understood it, I knew it was my motto.  Essayons is the French phrase “let us try” and I cannot put a measure to how many times I have used that phrase in English.  Beyond that, my heart swelled at the thought that all the essays I had ever written had something to do with the noble phrase.  The original Latin root, from which the French took “Essayer” is “Exigere” which means to “weigh” or “ascertain”.  And so that is what I am doing here.  I am writing as a means of weighing out my thoughts and determining what I want and need.

So do you care?  Does it matter?  Do I need readers in order to write?  Do I need readers so that my writing has purpose?  What do you think void?

I eagerly await your reply.