Years ago I wrote and broadcast a happy homily a day- a precursor of the daily blog. That's when I developed a 90-second mind. I think I have a shorter attention span now, and its a good thing because other people have, too. Still, I managed to come up with an idea a day, enough to tap-dance for about 900 words. I guess that's when I started squirrelling away my bits and pieces. (Swift recollection of Emily Carr's book, Hundreds and Thousands, aptly named.) One of my little meditations was about sunset depression. It came to mind this week. Sunset depression is the downer one experiences after days of relentless pleasure. I read of it happening to vacationers on yachts exploring the beauty of the Caribbean or South Seas or somewhere. They were breathless, awestruck, thrilled, and yes, happy, to see the glorious sunsets over the ocean every evening. That is to say, the first few were soul-satisfying. But the beauty went on and on and boredom set in. Oh, yeah, look, another glorious sky. Well, there's another one. That sure is nice. Uh huh. Got anything new? And so it goes, went. Surrounded by, drenched in, exposed to, satiated with, all that inexorable loveliness, people couldn't take it and got depressed and longed for change. . I suppose that's the reason for the constant search for new experiences and discoveries, to keep boredom at bay. I guess that's the reason people look forward to January. No sunsets in January, only bills. Something to look forward to?

Hoarding is in, sort of. Now the lucrative subject of reality TV and also a career opportunity for professional organizers who help others turn their personal chaos into soul-satisfying order, hoarding, nonetheless, is considered to be anathema, in short, a no-no. One of the causes (I say just one, because I can think of others, right off), is procrastination, which I have been fooling around with all my life. Procrastination, of course, affects mending and dusting and phoning for appointments and all the things you don't feel like doing. But with other activities, I should say non-activities, procrastination leads to accumulation by default which leads to collections not only of detritus and debris but also of "valuable" junk. Value is in the eye of the collector. I knew someone who collected postcards and who eventually made his acquisition pay off with the publication of a coffee table book of them.

Remember that old joke: "My psychiatrist thinks I'm crazy because I like pancakes." "That's not crazy, I like pancakes, too." "You do? You must come home with me to see mine. I have a whole trunk full of them" Some things are more collectable than others. One must learn to identify differences Discrimination, not procrastination, is the key.

Well, so ---blogs. I have just spent a half hour reading the contents of a folder labelled Blogs. It's full of clippings, columns, tear sheets and squibs.

(Squib: a small firework that burns with a hissing sound before exploding; a short piece of satirical writing; a short news item or filler in a newspaper - that's the meaning I want.)

This folder, I fear, is the first of many that will follow, bits and pieces of randomly selected ideas, facts, fancies, notions and what-have-yous that may never develop into a blog of my own, but that will clutter up my filing cabinet and my mind in the years to come. You got it: it's an embryonic dumpster. At least it doesn't smell.