Of late several of the people i know have decided to 'blog.' And apparently they are volumous in their efforts. Talking about everything from sports to politics to who the hell knows what. I only very occasionally settle in and write something here in this form, I follow a couple of blogs (make that one), and in general i find the whole voyeuristic sport kind of boring. Speaking about my everyday life tends to be something i focus on with my wife or friends.

This weekend though i read an article that startled me in its eloquence. It got me pondering about people and their use of language. Part of my rambling inner dialogue has become how do you take a vast vocabulary and apply it to your musings without coming off sesquipedalian. Is it a natural ability grounded in your genetics (...this one is to be a writer... this one is to be a rapper... this one is to be a used car salesman...) or does it come from the exersice of the grammar and language muscles. If it is in fact the later i am indeed a sad case having let mine atrophy continually since school. And even then using them only sparingly.

This is not a pointless departure. In graduate school i found that on occasion i had the ability to say the things i wanted on paper when it did not mean citing facts or research, but rather expressing opinion. Until thesis this served my purposes well. But when embarking on a planned exercise in research i found my verbal/literal skills to fail me. Now, here, removed from the climbs of academia i am returning to this same point of failure. There is a point i find myself scratching at continually. My interest in researching it is cumpulsory rather than just passing. I find fear though that i will end up in the same place i found during the last semesters of school.

I am wondering if using a blog to exercise the literal muscles can help me to overcome this fear.