I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this one for a while now. I’ve been trying to figure out what — exactly — I’m trying to accomplish with all this. Chances are you’ve already stumbled across the unfocused writings of my other-blog, lost.in.vancouver. As I write this I’ve poured exactly 148523 words into those three years of digital pages: and where am I?

Like I said, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this one for a while now.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my laptop keyboard punching random streams of thought into a meandering new year’s day entry, and by chance wrote: “I have been trying to figure out — exactly, or exactly as my fragile little brain can conceive — the universe. I know, I know. You’re sitting there thinking what a vague sort of notion that is. There’s Brad sitting at his computer acting all philosophical. We haven’t heard that one before. We haven’t suffered a thousand other deeply introspective musing about the state of existence — all of which, we might add, have lead to vague patterns of nothing in particular.”

In itself this says nothing. But then I fumbled out these words: “Pour enough of youself into something and you might get a whiff of something that I can’t really explain.”

And that was it. It was all about permission. And I needed a forum — a focus — an unfettered space to fill with thoughts that are less important than the tangible events of my life, but — at the same time — more important than anything else I could ever conceive.

And so I built this.

This is my “gu”. That’s the only time I’m going to use that word. Ever. If I ever type it again within the confines of one of these entries, write me and yell loudly.

What is it? As far as I can tell it is a pair of letters, joined together to make a word with absolutely no meaning. I checked. As I write these words, to the best of my knowledge, that word has no english definition that I could locate. Anywhere.

Well, anywhere, but in my head.

So that is what this is about. That is where I am going with this. I’m going to build a defintion for a non-existent word — or as much as I can — by filling these spaces with my own thoughts — serious, reflective, meditative, or philosophical — and then some.

And then we’ll see. Maybe. We’ll see what comes out of a technique more refined and more focused than the other bits I punched out over the last few years.