Fifteen Feet

I'm resisting a personal blog. What is a blog, anyway? A diary, a doodle, a self indulgence? Is it time wasted, or a way to shrug off life and get on with it? People who write personal blogs are akin to soldiers writing letters from the front. The letters are not so much intended for the readers as the writers. Why send a letter that may never reach its destination? Why stick a message in a bottle, or tie a note to a balloon? It must be our innate desire to reach for community, the need to somehow connect with other people in the most honest way our society now allows, this insulated forum. We all hope that somehow, if other people could just see the world through our eyes, they would really like us. Maybe we could all sweep away our rickety presumptions to the foundation and start building something new. And as the villains in my life slowly disappear into people with every learned name and shook hand, I think… yeah. It's not a bad hope. Maybe personal blogs aren't such wasted time after all.

Besides, I probably need to stop filling my other blogs with rambles, of which I have far more in my head than have, thus far, reached print. If I were to write them all on my group blogs, I've no doubt that I would wake up one night with an angry torch-bearing mob outside my door. This one is for me and me alone, a place to write any deep thought I have (God willing) without screeching other conversations to an awkward halt.

As to the name... Fifteen feet is the typical depth at which all surfacing divers must stop in order to decompress. The average bucket of water is what, two feet tall? Think of how much that one bucket weighs. Now imagine stacking twenty buckets on your chest, and that’s how much pressure your body has to put up with for a low key dive. You can’t go for long like that without your insides getting a bit screwed up. If you don’t stop at the fifteen foot mark before you surface, you will literally explode.

And that’s the gist of my Fifteen Feet. A place to decompress, to get rid of the thoughts that build up from the pressure of deeper waters. The funny thing about the fifteen foot stop is, every diver does it alone. Sure, you bob around watching everyone else, maybe give a silent wave, but it’s up to you to hold your place, to take the time to stop. Just like a personal blog, a moment alone, five solitary minutes to reflect. Who knows? Maybe after floating here a while, I’ll reach the surface.