I was born to a pair of hippies who, as many had at that time, had tossed the beliefs and ideals of their parents out the window. Instead of the cooperate rat race, and a number of other things I could never begin to list, they abandoned their intended pursuits, and set up house in a small town in Vermont.

Despite, or perhaps because of this, the very first real memories I have involve reading and learning. No matter what we did, or where we lived, these two things – Reading and Learning – were valued above all else.

I began writing in sixth grade. In fact my first output was a set of haiku as a part of a class assignment. For better or worse, I was hooked. Until recent years I continued to write, sometimes sporadically, other times prolifically, but I wrote. In either case, poetry – my primary creative product – was at one point, the safest form of expression available.

Over the years I was fortunate in that a number of people, both familial and not, came into my life and took an interest in my writing & other forms of expression. They encouraged a continual artistic growth over the years which carries forward to this day.

Sometimes gently. Sometimes forcefully, perhaps even brutally; but never negatively, there has always been someone to provide the correct encouragement or shove at just the right moment in time. From a contemplative standpoint; I find it fascinating to watch how an individual's compositions evolve over a span of time. We see how that which was once crucial to survival, becomes forgotten with the passage of time.

For myself writing was one of these things. As my career as a Web Developer progressed, my passion for words did not fade, but writing did take a definite backseat to the rest of life rushing past on all sides. Despite a number of attempts to return to writing, I took an almost ten year break where, other than an occasional essay, letter, or poem scribbled out in a fit of inspiration, I wrote nothing except bland documentations telling clients how to use various pieces of software or web applications.

In the mid-2000s I discovered blogging. Reviewing the content on this site you can see that I made a number of forays back into written word starting in late 2005. These attempts were short-lived at best, and of debatable quality at worse, yet they stand as what they truly are – a collection of the thoughts of Brendan W Vittum, and the foundation of my return to a love fostered in my youth by parents, family, friends and teachers alike.

I still write today -- if nothing else, this website is evidence of that fact. While poetry happens less often these days than it once did, it is still a large part of my life. In addition, as you can see from the content of this site, my primary writing exists in the form of essays and editorials and tutorials.

The how and why are quite complex as any good story must be. I have made several attempts, none completely successful to date, to record parts of this tale, but until I manage to sit down and put it all together in a cohesive form you will have to settle for piecing it together yourself from the articles spread throughout The Lair. But, like a snowball starting its journey down from the top of a mountain I have, over the past year returned to the art of writing with a fervor and vigor which only gains momentum with each passing day.

Why this sudden and flurried return to an art I had almost abandoned? Four separate, unique, and equally important women came into my life almost simultaneously, and all showed me that I could still write. Worse, that I not only could, but to not do so was to stifle a vital piece of the who and what and why that I am. They each showed me very different things about very different forms and styles of writing, but I now know one can take a creative approach to the technical writings I do, as well as bring a technical slant to my creative pieces.

In short, my life does not have to be about this, or about that, but can be, is even, an amalgamation of my three passions – Writing, Computers, and Art.

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