First Principles

I don't always I know what you're doing here, but I like reading it. -- from Cecilia (excerpt of her most recent comment)

Thank you, Cecilia. It's time that I took a moment to explain myself and the purpose of this particular blog. Its origin in April 2006 was due to two factors. I was trying to survive a painful breakup with a person I thought was my soul mate. When it became clear that there was no other clear outlet for my pain, my oldest daughter (who is a gifted writer) suggested that I create a blog, and just post whatever I was feeling in the course of that breakup and my subsequent recovery.

It is funny and perhaps ironic that although I had been following the emergence of blogs, and even co-taught the art of blogging at Stanford during my three years as a visiting professor there, it had never occurred to me to become a blogger myself.

After all, isn't the so-called blogosphere supposedly an outlet for "citizen journalists," and others who feel shut out of the conventional media world?

If so, I could never qualify. I've published hundreds of articles, including a smattering in some of the biggest and best publications here and overseas. I've published books, journal articles, a textbook (of sorts), chapters in various additional books, fiction (under pseudonyms), columns, and written screenplays as well as the story for a film that was a Warner Brothers release in the early '80s.

I've also been the central character in a documentary, and a contributing producer to several others; I've been the executive producer of many radio programs on public radio; and a guest on many other shows, both radio and TV, here and overseas.

I could go on, but you get the picture. I am hardly an outsider in the world of media, though I have always been mainly attached to the alternative channels of communication, not the corporate mainstream.

Despite this personal history (and I hope it does not sound as if I am promoting myself here -- these are the simple facts of my career), nothing I have done previously or accomplished prepared me for the state I found myself in April 2006:

Older, lonely, alone, isolated, alienated, depressed, very sad, flirting with suicidal tendencies, enough so that I had a plan (which I now know is a very bad sign indeed.)

So, following my daughter's advice, I started laying out in this space my honest emotional state. It is very hard, however, for me to remain focused on my own story, and in fact antithetical to my professional training and personal inclinations.

My professional life has been devoted to telling other people's stories, especially those who lack a voice. I've written articles and books and helped produce documentaries about those in Third World countries who continue to suffer from the effects documented in my first book, Circle of Poison (co-authored with my buddy, Mark Schapiro).

I also continue to devote myself to helping young journalists develop (my favorite activity),as captured in my second book, Raising Hell (co-authored with my buddy, Dan Noyes).

By the mid-80s, I was focusing on the prospect of global environmental disaster; thus, my third book, The Bhopal Syndrome.

Then, abruptly, my personal life took a violent and unexpected turn down a different path. I became obsessed with fiction, but doubted my ability to create anything of value. Thus, I have never published any fiction whatsoever under my own name.

In a much more important realm, I continued to be blessed by creating children -- wonderful, beautiful, brilliant children, six in all, during marriages to two lovely wives.

I, however, proved to be a very difficult husband, with many more problems than the space here (though unlimited) could ever accommodate were I to be descriptively explicit.

So, with no specific agenda and without hope of finding one, I have simply committed myself to write night after night, and to post at this URL. I'm a compulsive writer and photographer, and I post other material elsewhere, on numerous blogs.

I hope this helps reintroduce me to you, dear reader. I have no idea what this blog is about, now I have recovered and moved on from the state that precipitated it. It's all improv these days. I don't even know when I sit down and begin where I am going or why.

This is just what I do, and therefore who I am.

A simple writer, hoping my stories somehow help anyone who encounters them.

Love,

David