Yes one can.
Though writing is, to my mind, one of the best ways of keeping in cognitive shape,
the White Queen from Through the Looking Glass (chapter
five) certainly had a good technique.
Alice laughed, "There's no use trying," she said, "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Personal web sites probably deal quite a bit more with the possible than with
the impossible, but there's also a "what if" aspect to them that perhaps
suggests that in our technological age the White Queen might have become a blogger.
A blog titled Six Impossible
Things Before Breakfast actually exists. It's a great name (the subtitle:
Through the looking glass, on the way to a PhD, is also great), and a good read
as well. This time (click here if you haven't yet
got to that other time) it's the blog of a different sort of mother - one working
on her doctorate, though in this case as well there's quite a bit of juggling
between different worlds. This woman writes about her life somewhat differently
- she tends to switch between personal and academic entries, rather than stuffing
both into the same post. Still, she offers a believable glimpse into a life I
might never have been aware of.
Though I might be expected to find more in common with an academic mother than
with a fundamentalist home-maker, I find myself attracted more to Amy's postings,
though of course this is simply a personal preference.
This time, however, I don't have to wonder what I was looking for that led me
to this blog. That's an easy one - I wanted the precise quote from the White Queen,
and this blog came up very high in the search results - offering me both the answer
to what I sought, and a pleasant encounter as an unexpected side-effect.
Go to: Mental Gymnastics?, or
Go to: On completing a web site