Forgot Again?

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I’ve noticed a pattern.  I’ve been posting daily on this blog for over thirteen years now.  During the past two of those, several days (including the day before yesterday) have gone without a post.  It’s not that they haven’t been written—no, I have a surplus of ideas—it’s because of the pattern I mention.  I know that early morning is a bad time to be active on social media.  Few others are awake and by the time they are many, many more posts come on top of my meager efforts.  So in my reptilian brain, I think, “Maybe I should wait until about 6:30 to post—you know, when people are awake.”  My reptilian brain tends to rise between three and four (sometimes earlier) and so I really do believe people are shaking off sleep at around 6:30.  I think this although my family repeatedly assures me it’s just not true.

In any case, I load up my daily post on WordPress before starting work, which I also do early.  The pattern for the days I forget to post is this: something sets off my early morning schedule and I forget to click “publish” before getting engrossed with work.  I guess I need a blog posting alarm clock.  For example, two days ago I had an early author call from someone in Europe.  I don’t mind early calls,  as long as they’re pre-arranged, but that meant I had to jog early so that I could get dressed in time—I don’t like meeting someone for business for the first time wearing sweats.  By the time I’d jogged, changed, and wolfed down breakfast, I’d forgotten to click “publish” for the post already loaded up and ready to go.  Any interruption to my schedule can do this.  Just last month I forgot because election results were coming in.  I need that alarm clock.

Posting daily is a happy part of my routine.  I’ve done in when I have a flight out of the country later in the day.  Or when I’m overseas, I make sure to post ultra early Eastern Time (presuming I’m flying east) to make sure I get one post in each day.  If I fly west I post ultra early local time so that I can keep it about the same time as usual, or else I post later than usual—time zones flummox me.  (So far those western flights haven’t been out of the country, I would note.)  When I forget to post, however, I’m home and something disrupts my morning schedule.  Those who live by the clock, I’m told, die by the clock.  And when that happens, I’ll probably have a post loaded but I hope I’ll be forgiven if I forget to click “publish,” even if my alarm clock does go off.

ABC 2 QWERTY

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I thought this was over after school.  Sitting in a class with a long list of names, always coming in last—or very nearly so—because my name began with W.  Even now, however, it still happens at work.  If there are a limited number of places at an event, just try to register with a W (or X, Y, or Z) name.  Even if you get your name in first, you automatically drop to the bottom of the stack for many electronic lists (AI knows the alphabet, right Hal?).  This got me to thinking about the alphabet.  Alphabetical order is, of course, neither fair nor random.  It follows strict rules and it must in order to work properly.  The assignment of alphabetical order, however, is arbitrary.  More than that, it is a teaching tool cum organizing principle.

Consider your basic keyboard.  It’s used far more often than the alphabet and if we went in QWERTY order, Ws would always be near the front of the list.  Problem is, although our fingers know the keyboard well, who can recite it?  Maybe we need a mnemonic device like “Quite well, early riser, thank you…”   Someone at some stage laid out alphabetic order.  The earliest known abecedaries seem to come from Ugarit.  That doesn’t mean they were invented there, but it also doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been.  We don’t know what the criteria were, but interestingly enough, what we transliterate as w came about sixth place.  The order is largely recognizable to modern schoolchildren, although they had fewer letters and some of them we don’t have.  W was in the middle but closer to the head of the class.

An Ugaritic abecedary

There have likely been psychological studies done on the mental state inflicted by always being last, or near the end.  Granted, a good part of it is because of the gospels, but I wonder if my tendency to think others should go in front of me is a life-long socialization of being a W.  Growing up in a town with few “exotic” names, I don’t recall ever not being last.  There were teachers who would divide by height, but that’s even worse because I’m not tall.  Could it be that something as random as scratch marks made on clay by some priest or scribe in illo tempore, thousands of years ago, led to such a blog post as this in the early twenty-first century?  All I know is that my projects at work still get bumped because kindergarten politics still hold.