Letting Things Brew

"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short" - Blaise Pascal.

"You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger." - James 1:19

Today, The Scratching Post is instituting a new policy. All thought pieces will be allowed to brew at least over night before publishing*. I've written some things lately that I regret and things that I loathe due to their crude prose. I'm considering unpublishing them or at least annotating them with some kind of disclaimer.

Anger is a great cause of sin with me. Polemics come easily - nasty words are the fastest for me to type. Sometimes it's a good thing, but most of the time it is not. Sleeping on it for at least a night ought to prevent me from regretting things later.

I've blogged about this before. Anger has always been a great cause of sin with me. In the past, I've vowed to chart a new direction, but in the end, I keep going back to certain topics. Rather than avoid the things that interest me, I'm going to try taking the time to calm down before I publish.

The best solutions to problems are typically the simplest. Vowing to follow a complex set of rules or procedures fights against our natural laziness. I'm betting something as simple as scheduling my thought pieces a day into the future and reviewing them the next morning will work well.

If not, I'll try something else. Constantly giving in to the temptation to shred people is not OK. Neither is sloppy writing.

Waiting overnight to publish posts should prevent me from looking like a lunatic on the blog.
* - Everything after this one, that is. I know we have to start somewhere, but why here and why now? Let's put this whole "wait until it's time" thing off one more post.