Dead Reckoning

Blogging is a stupid word.  Vlogging is even worse, but I haven't ever done it.

Now, log is an okay word on its own.  It has a great physicality to it, it it comes out of times when people worked aboard ships.

You use a device called a log (which, a long time ago, actually was a log, like, a part of a tree) to measure how fast your ship is going.  You take those measurements regularly and keep them in a logbook.  It's important to keep track of your speed like this, because it lets you know how far you've traveled in an age before GPS.  For centuries, an accurate logbook was the only way to determine your position on the open ocean.

Over time, "logbook" became "log," and it began to include lots of other information as well.  Then "web logging" was invented, and it needed a special name instead of just "writing a diary for internet strangers to read."  So blogging entered the lexicon, even though it sounds more like something they would do to heretics during the Inquisition, or a step in the process of cheese production.

The thing is, though, a log used to be important.  In 1707, Admiral Cloudesley Shovell and around 2,000 other members of the British Navy drowned in the English Channel, because they didn't know where the hell they were.  Their logbook was off, and they couldn't figure out the position of their fleet.  They struck rocks near the Isles of Scilly.  Four ships sank.  Bodies washed up to shore for days.

This log doesn't carry the same weight.  My world is not without a landmark or two.  But nonetheless, maybe writing here can help me get my bearings.  Someday, although I'm not sure how, I would like to be able to navigate from this log.  To read my longitude in the line of words.

I'm not sure where I'm heading or how fast.  And I don't know how to change course.  But maybe if I can locate myself on the map I'm drawing here, I can at least be prepared when I get there.  I have this log, and I have the stars at night: people have crossed oceans with as much.

And you, internet strangers, if you are skilled in trigonometry, maybe you can find my position, too.  Trace it out on a map, and divine our distance by walking a compass across the table.  If you can chart my course, try to meet me somewhere in the open sea.

If you see me, throw me a line.