The Ordeal of Blogging

“We’ve got a few more ordeals to face?” I said. “I don’t recall the you part of the we being much part of the last one.”

“We were there in spirit,” said Yewell.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you were.”

“We’ll stick closer on the next one,” assured Iman.

“What’s the next one?”

The aliens looked at one another and smiled.

“I really hate it when you do that,” I said.

Yewell shrugged. “You’ll get over it.”

In another instant, we were no longer watching Angeline walk down the sidewalk. The sidewalk was no longer there. Instead, we were once again in the nebulous void, engulfed in blackness. However, there was something different. It felt strangely different than it had before.

“Again with the void?” I said. “Can’t you guys come up with something a little more original than nothing? I get it already. Everything comes out of nothing. Can we move on?”

“How does that work for you?” Yewell said, pointing behind me.

I turned to see what appeared to be a large television monitor. However, the program was nothing more than a guy who didn’t know his webcam was on. I blinked a couple of times and recognized the man as Carter.

“Isn’t that the carpenter?” I said. “The one we saw in the library?”

“Very astute,” said Iman.

“Why are we watching him?”

“Because we’re in the middle of his Supreme Ordeal.”

“Are we now? And what might that be?”

“Carter’s been out of work for quite some time now,” Iman continued. “The economy being what it is, there isn’t much work out there for a carpenter. So he decided to go a different route.”

“What route is that?”

“Well, after more than twenty years in the business, he’s accumulated quite a bit of knowledge on the best ways to build, however, he’s also realized many ways on how not to do things.”

“So?”

“So,” Yewell continued, “Carter took the initiative to gain a little more knowledge on the way things are going these days and instead of building with boards and nails, he started building with clicks and bytes.”

“Huh? You lost me.”

“He’s been building a website, knucklehead. This website,” Yewell said, waving his hand behind us.

I turned around again to see Carter’s newest creation. The website was immense from where we stood. What was blackness only a moment ago was now a website with links to information on a number of construction ins and outs, from simple building with wood to going green.

“From nothing comes everything,” said Iman.

“We’re in his computer?” I asked.

“We figured it would be a good way to get a better glimpse at what he was up to,” said Yewell.

“So he’s becoming a blogger?” I said. “But there are millions of bloggers out there. Doesn’t he know how stiff the competition is?”

“There are millions of actors too,” said Iman, “but that didn’t stop Angeline. Competition should never be a reason not to do something. If it were, nothing would ever get done.”

“Carter is following his bliss,” said Yewell.  “Building is what he’s passionate about. His thinking was that if he couldn’t do it himself, the next best thing was to help others to do it better.”

“I suppose that’s admirable,” I said.

Looking at the website from our vantage point, I could see each of the links that he provided leading to more and more pages, tethered by electronic links that glowed with pulsing bits of information. I moved through the initial page to see how many hundreds of links that Carter had sewn together in his latest construction project.

“He’s certainly done his homework,” I said.

“This is what he’s passionate about,” said Iman.

“This is his Supreme Ordeal?”

“As you said, the competition is fierce,” Iman nodded, “and considering that Carter didn’t even know what a blog was a few months ago, we think this has been quite an ordeal for him.”

“So what’s going to happen to him? How does it turn out?”

Yewell smiled, “He has only just begun to tweet, but we think he’s got a great song.”

“Speaking of which…” said Iman.

“What now?” I said as I was once again whisked away through time, space, and the expanse of my mind.