Blogging is NOT my thing!

It appears that blogging is not a natural thing for me. I do not feel compelled to do it.

Again I am thinking of Peter B. Gillis, a friend from my college days, with whom I have recently reconnected; electronically at least. My understanding from Peter is that blogging has become something of an addiction for him. I don't know if this addiction serves Peter well or not, but I suspect that it can serve the rest of us.

Peter's blog, which I believe I have read in its entirety, is complex, random, and intellectual to the max. What I find most fascinating about his blog is what it reveals about me. I am in total envy of this guy; I suppose that has been true since I first met Peter. Peter was a 16 year old 1st year student at the University of Chicago when we first met. He was an odd ball with dreams of becoming a comic book writer, medievalist, and god knows what else. Intense, brilliant, mentally alive, he has always been at the top of my memory list of people that I knew from those days, behind a list of co-eds, who for obvious reasons had a more visceral impact on me.

Reading Peter's blog is a good way of getting to know what it means to be an intellectual. Peter's interests are hugely broad and he demonstrates a depth of comprehension that is frankly astounding. Peter's obsessions go way beyond just blogging. It is pretty evident that he has been obsessed with learning everything he could about whatever he found interesting. What a phenomenal mind he has.

Yes, I have an extreme case of Peter envy.

Unlike Peter, I have not been particularly interested in any worlds beyond my own inner world. I have never been a serious fan of anything. I've certainly been influenced by writers, musicians, artists, teachers, and people I've met through the course of my life but I have never found any of them to be important enough to spend any serious time or energy really trying to understand them or what they thought.

I don't know if I am lacking in curiosity or am just too caught up in my own illusions to be bothered with the external world. I am not given to critical thought -- too much work and not enough reward. I pretty much flounder when I attempt to use formal logic. Mathematics are a complete mystery to me.

Mostly though, I live in my gut. Emotion is the dominate force in my life. Even when I was trying to live the life of the mind at the University of Chicago, my reality was that I was living the life of the gut.

When I meet people like Peter, I feel that I've got it all wrong, that I should be living the life of the mind; intellect should be what I aspire to. The bottom line though is that I'm not made that way. I could try for my entire life to be like Peter and I would fail. I am a gut person. My worlds are sensation, emotion, an inward eye; the outside world can grab me but it can't hold me.

There've been times when I believed myself to be a lesser person because I do not relate to the world the way that Peter and other great minds do. The truth though is I wouldn't change places with him even if I could because I'm here to be me.

I guess it is just a gut thing.