Deleted Scenes

We're barely over two months into 2013, and I've already posted more columns to this blog than in all of last year. Part of this is because of my unofficial goal to get out one post a week. But a bigger reason is because over the course of 2011 and 2012, I left a lot of half-finished posts unpublished.

The problem is that publishing columns to a blog hardly anyone reads is a low priority next to...well, next to just about everything else I do. It's good to keep in practice, but since I am writing for other outlets, as well as teaching and taking pictures and doing whatever else I can to make money under the mighty banner of Wounded Mosquito Productions, blogging is only slightly more important than keeping up my basketball skills. And anyone who has seen me on the court in the last two months knows that isn't saying much.

Thing is, I've started numerous posts over the last couple of years that I just never got around to finishing, either because I never felt good about them or because they were way too time-sensitive for me to post a week or two after the event they were referencing. So I've got this massive archive in my Blogger portal of never-before-seen-and-probably-for-good-reasons material.

Some of the posts were interesting enough that I still wonder if I should finish them:

• A post about the end of the Hostess company.

• A post about Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow, and whether God cares about sports.

• A post about my last night as a Utah Jazz season ticket holder.

• A post about running my first 5K.

• A post about Deron Williams' return to Utah after his trade to New Jersey.

• Multiple posts where I rant about blind dating.

• A post where I try to justify skipping the Paul McCartney concert during the same stretch where I attended shows from KISS, Public Enemy, and Bon Jovi.

• A post where I try to respond to the accusation of being "Baby Crazy" after posting numerous pictures of my now two-year-old niece to Facebook.

• A post about my aforementioned declining basketball skills, which I tried to combine with a commentary about Jerry Sloan's sudden retirement, then tried to combine with a commentary about Deron Williams' trade to New Jersey, then finally abandoned.

I guess I try to write about the Jazz a lot. See what I mean about timeliness, though?

As I look back even farther, I find more curious examples:

• A post from September 2006 about working in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building Bakery.

• A post from 2009 about the new Star Trek movie.

• A post from January 2010 about my inability to lie (and consequently, pull effective pranks).

• A May 2010 post where I outlined different points of advice I'd offer myself if I could go back in time ten years.

• A laundry list of important things I have learned over my many years of dating.

Looking over this list, there are some obvious reasons many of these posts never saw the light of the Interwebs. There were others I didn't post because they turned out to be far more personal than I feel comfortable sharing. But it is a curious archive if nothing else, and my guess is that much of the worthwhile content will find life in a different post or project down the road.

The single strangest thing I can take from this exercise is that once again I find myself fighting this idea that if something isn't posted on my blog or uploaded to Facebook, it didn't really happen. It's a completely bizarre and ludicrous idea, and I'd feel a lot more comfortable thinking it had more to do with closure, or just finishing what I start. Because why would I care whether random net surfers in Singapore know about my feelings about Jerry Sloan's retirement two years ago?

If an image or an article isn't published online, does it truly exist?

In the meantime, I'll keep trying to give the blog enough of a priority to get out one column a week. Maybe once I get my rhythm going, I can start worrying about how to get more than a dozen people to read them.