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Weekend Werind: Barking Up an Old Tree

When you’ve written as many posts as I have — thirteen hundred and five, according to the counter — it’s difficult to always cover new ground. At least, I assume it would be, if that sort of thing didn’t sound so damned exhausting.

Still, I don’t like to completely rehash a topic. But occasionally, I probably do. I have room in my head for what, three or four ideas, at least. And dozens more on the little bits of paper and cocktail napkins and in the pocket notebooks I’ve carried — and managed not to lose — over the years. These days, even my phone is an accomplice; there are a dozen or more post ideas sitting in its sweaty little memory banks right this minute.

Luckily, it’s the weekend, when I rehash old crap. So I don’t have to care about any of that. Or read them and wonder, lWhat the hell was I thinking?‘ or lCouldn’t I get arrested for saying that?‘ or lIs that even English?‘

Hey, I said I had ideas. I never claimed any of them were good ideas.

Hey, I said I had ideas. I never claimed any of them were good ideas. You should really know better by now.

Anyway, sometimes one of these ideas sticks with me. After I write about it, after I cross it off the list, after the fevered dreams and therapy sessions and the rocking back and forth in a cold sweat whispering about it. Every once in a while, I completely forget that I’ve written a post about it, and it ends up back on the list. I’m sure that’s a not-so-good symptom of my impending mental infirmary, but for the moment, its just damned inconvenient. Every other time I sit down to write, I have to sift through my own archives to see whether I’m plagiarizing my younger self.

(Not that id be especially apologetic if I did. My younger self was kind of an idiot. Plus, if things got out of hand and physical over a repost, I’m not worried. I could totally take me.)

Usually, I’m in the clear, and I write whichever bit of nonsense was on my mind. Sometimes, a familiar-sounding idea will turn out to be so for a good reason, and I’ll move on to another topic. Right after I read the original post, curse me-from-the-past and snort, ‘Pffft. I could’ve written a much better post than that.‘

(Which is probably exactly the same thing me-from-the-future will say someday about the stuff I’m writing now, the bastard. Future me is such a pompous ass. Not like now-me.

No, you shut up.)

Of course, every once iin a great while, I’ll have this great ‘new’ idea that I’m positively certain, probably maybe as far as I can remember, that I haven’t covered. And I’ll look it up, just to be safe, and there it is, in back and white and two shades of blue, taunting me from months or years before. Stupid sexy younger me.

such was the case earlier this week, when I finally — so I thought — got around to writing about the frustration my dog must feel at only having one sort of bark with which to communicate her myriad of puppy needs. It’s been languishing in the notebooks for a while, and it was high time to give it a go.

Only, I already gave it a went. A little over two years ago, in a post entitled Woofin’ It.

(Pffft. I could’ve written a much better title than that.)

So there you go. You almost saw it twice, in probably slightly different form. But instead, I’m just pointing you back to the original, giving you nothing new, and thinking again that I really need to get my head checked.

And isn’t that what weekends are all about, really? Happy Sunday, folks.