A Different Tack

I play with words. Though admittedly not all that funny much of the time, most of my humor revolves around puns, deliberate twisting of words, and some free association. I also tend to be pretty picky about common misuses of words and phrases, misspellings and misapplications of grammar rules. I’m not so uptight that I capitalize and correctly punctuate IM and SMS messages. But I will admit that poorly written comments, which seem to be the norm on the Internet, make me cringe. So, with that as a background, I figured I’d explain why I started this blog, and what the name means.

A long time ago — in the mid-90s, I believe — I had my own site on which I posted pictures, a profile, a few musings, and the obligatory affiliate links (Amazon, Buy.com, etc). That site passed into memory years ago, and I’ve been kicking around some ideas for a replacement for quite some time. I’m a bit of a political junkie, so I thought about starting my own debate site, to try to promote rational discourse. But I don’t think our political culture is ready for rationality just yet. So, that idea never got off the ground. I also thought about creating a site dedicated to helping to rid the Internet of stupidity by pointing out common writing mistakes, and perhaps providing some “stupidity-checking” tools. But a quick perusal of the comments on Yahoo’s Sports pages demonstrates how hopeless such an effort would be. Then, a little over a year ago, my baby boy arrived, and I thought he might be the perfect subject for a blog. However, predating the true “connected generation” by a few years, I haven’t bought into the idea that my life — or my son’s — is anyone else’s business. What if I innocently post details about his day-to-day life that he will someday find embarrassing? So, I’ve been hesitant about blogging out his life. Then I thought, well, maybe I could just do a little bit of all of those things….

And thus Picked Nits was born. The title is itself a mild play on words — I plan to focus mostly on little things, and I will voice my complaints about such things as how people can’t seem to navigate the I/me distinction. It is likely that, from time to time, I’ll expound a bit on a political issue, or perhaps on something big that happens in my boy’s life. But, mostly, I intend to keep the scope of my posts small, and talk about the little things that tend to take up a big part of life. Hopefully, this will also make it easier to write on a regular basis.

If you’re curious, the title of this post is a bit of fun with words, as well. I’ve heard/read people use the phrase, “a different tact,” quite a bit. I came across it again this morning, and it gave me an idea for this post. First of all, it seemed appropriate given the various approaches I’d considered before finally starting this blog. And it also gave me an opportunity to point out that it’s “tack” (basically, a course or direction) not “tact” (ability to avoid offense). And thus my first nit is picked!