I confess that I am like an aeolian harp — which gives off some pretty sounds but can play no songs.
— Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
I’ve spent the last few weeks going through my archives and collecting my best efforts to present in bespoke book form to my oldest friend for her birthday later this year. It’s fun to take a bird’s-eye view on twenty years of scribbling, to see how my thoughts have developed or changed, but it also confronts me with my own limitations. I have a few favorite themes, and I’ve produced some good jokes and some well-turned phrases, but per the Peter Principle, it’s clear that the blog is the highest level of my writing competence, such as it is. There will be no extended essays forthcoming, let alone novels or monographs. I’m just another unremarkable koi fish in the small WordPress pond, and that’s how I like it.