I wonder if America has fallen into the odd position of questioning our own relevance. (I love my country, I love my country, I love my country - please don't think I don't.) I'm sure that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both nearly overwhelmed by how close they are to being incredibly relevant - Obama because he wasn't entirely sure he would get here and Clinton because she never thought she would only be here.

And John McCain is pretending that he always knew how this would play out when really - who is he kidding?

But beyond the obvious there are so many other people who have opened their mouths and said impressive, stupid, bizarre and foolish things over the past couple of months and found themselves suddenly relevant - like talked about on national news shows relevant - and they can't believe it; they don't know what to do about it.

They never thought anyone would read their stupid little blog entry or an interview in an obscure newspaper or a sound byte all the way from Europe or whatever. They didn't realize how much we all seem to be desperately searching for relevance in our lives - our political, professional, social and personal lives - or that we would elevate anyone that says (or does) anything that seems the slightest bit interesting, odd or ridiculous to the nearest pedestal we can find. We don't want reality - we don't want the war or the economy or the fact that there is still racism in the US - in our living rooms. We just want someone to say or do something that makes us stop for a second and stare in slack jawed amazement.

Give us that and we'll give you 15 minutes and then some.

All of this is the long way of coming around to my own search for relevance. I'm trying to figure out the next step on so many different levels. I have decent columns of good reads at Bookslut and Eclectica and I think that is a solid thing - a worthy five minutes out of someone's day. But are those recommendations relevant to anyone other than the authors? I really couldn't tell you because I have no earthly idea. I don't know if anyone reads my stuff at all really. (I'm sometimes tempted to put an outrageous paragraph in the middle of a column just to see if anyone notices.) But that's not really it - there's the Blog Blast Tours which I think are a good thing but need to be more well known to the reading public. How do I do that? I'm not sure. And Guys Lit Wire which could be really amazing and helpful for a ton of teenage boys (and those who know and love them) - how do I make a site like that relevant?

How does the world find you if you aren't willing to be outrageous?

The biggest personal test of relevance for a writer is of course, the words we write. I'm in the middle of two late chapters on The Map of My Dead Pilots - one on a good pilot who crashed and one on why some pilots would fly in crap weather and others wanted only to fly in perfect weather. Neither is technically hard to write (I'm doing a bit of research for the good pilot chapter which is why it wasn't written sooner) but I keep looking at the computer screen and wondering why on earth I am still doing this. We are surrounded by so many significant things that deserve our attention (is there any good news anymore about the world?). How in the world can I make a bunch of guys flying around in Alaska relevant?

I mean really - it is what I know and it was what I did but does it matter in the most important sense of the word? And more importantly - should it matter?

I know art is important and creating is important but still I hesitate. Can I really compete with a country enraptured by comparing Bill Richardson to Judas? No, I can't. Relevance seems to be skirting an all time low in the country today; how in the world do any of us hope to fit in - and more importantly, in this brave new world of tragedy and foolishness, do we really want to?

It's just a book about men and flying. I can't make it anything other than that.