WHY?

I got my first cell phone in 2005. The same year I graduated high school. The same phone I use today. The phone makes calls and sends text messages. For the latter, my cell phone prefers T9 Word. T9 tries to predict the words my thumbs are typing before I finish typing them. It has had seven full years to get to know me, yet it remains a horrible judge of character and exposition. I consistently confirm plans via text with one word:  cool. At least that’s my intended word of choice. What friends often receive in its place is T9’s best guess at the digits 2-6-6-5: book.

“Yo Kev, Titanic is back and it’s in three dimensions bro! I’ll meet you at the theatre.”

“Book!”

The urge to correct myself faded long ago. I now trust “book” to capture the feeling I wish to convey. At worst I find myself in an impromptu reading circle with friends when I thought we were seeing a movie—but what is so wrong about that? If anything it’s rather apropos that a refusal to keep pace with cellular technology is also a force of nostalgia in other areas of life. Books hold answers to questions that cannot be found in 3D movies theatres.

I write this now because my cell phone is dying. It has not seen more than two bars of signal strength in months and is making a habit of bouncing “book” texts right back in my face. But it will not go quietly. It has recently come to my attention that I may have been missing the point entirely. That maybe seven years of terrible T9 texting has been for a larger purpose. That, rather than holding me in the past, T9 Word has been busy priming and prodding me for the future. Book?

I work best in one-year increments, tackling one-year goals. I would not categorize myself as an anxious person, but I am certainly on the high-strung end of things. It is vital to my wellbeing that I have an outlet to pour my energy into during my alone time. Otherwise I end up trying to reach the end of the Internet or the end of an Ironman.

This blog is dedicated to the writing of a book. The ideas, images, and excerpts presented here will reflect that which inspires me as I conceive, create, shape, self-publish, and eventually mail to your address, a collection of short stories.

Is that book with you?

-KK