A Small Step Forward

As you'll see from the Blog's title, this page isn't about self-expression. It's not about me exercising my right to free speech. I'm not strengthening our democracy (as you might already know). I'm not writing for the love of it. I'm not, in other words, being carried forth by wild and fervent passions, as you might, at first, have thought. Nope. I'm writing this because I want a job and maybe, just maybe, someone important will read this.

Yet keeping one's blog matter of fact and setting it in a congenial, unpretentious tone of voice (as befitting an aspiring journalist, at least in theory) is evidently not going to be easy. Simply trying to set up the blog led to my being confronted with literary genius that extends beyond what I expected to find here at Blogger. As the established bloggers out there will know, one has to choose a template when setting up one's blog, but one would think that the good men and women at Google would try to keep things simple so as not to frighten away those who are a little sceptical about their talent as a writer. And yet this was their sample blog:

"More glorious and more dread than from no fall

Mee though just right, and the fixt Laws of Heav'n /
Did first create your Leader, next, free choice, /
With what besides, in Counsel or in Fight, /
Hath bin achievd of merit, yet this loss /
Thus farr at least recover'd, hath much more /
Establisht in a safe unenvied Throne /
Yeilded with full consent."

'Ah,' I thought. 'Beautiful,' before I was pulled out of my state of revery by the recollection that I was going to start here today by talking about the difficulties of growing grass in Grahamstown this time of year. 'Should I rewrite my pop botanical thesis into verse,' I wondered? 'Do they prefer that cold reason be adorned in verse's sweet trappings down in the busy offices of the Mail and Guardian or The Sunday Independent?' These are questions that I will have to leave unanswered for now, hopefully only until I receive a phone call from their respective offices. (Isn't that how this job hunting thing works?)

In the meantime, I will leave you with this (just in case):

Lo, the grass is not green but brown.
I look outside; I don't smile but frown.
This dreary winter is killing the grass,
With my gardening efforts reduced to farce.
Heark, heard I a robin sing?
Nay, 'twas just my mind.