not quite dead yet

Here’s the deal.

I didn’t intend to take a vacation from my blog. I got busy and missed a few days. Then a few more. I thought about writing, really I did. I composed the opening lines to several posts in my head. But whenever I found a few spare moments, I just didn’t feel like writing because I knew that I should write. The thought of it hung over me like a chore. And who needs another chore? Honestly. I have enough of those already.

When I first started my blog, I wrote out of a powerful need to hear myself think and write my thoughts down. I never anticipated that people would want to read what I had to say. That aspect of the blogosphere took me by surprise. And a pleasant surprise it has been. I feel like I’ve found a small band of friends who support me and feed my hungry ego yummy chocolate-coated compliments . Some days, when the frustrations and tedium of my life seem (in my melodramatic mind anyway) too much to bear, I have gotten by purely on the adrenalin rush of a new post and the comments that follow. Thank you.

But the problem with having an audience is that I worry about disappointing them. Some days I wish this blog were more of a soliloquy and less of a big, dramatic, must hire Kenneth Branagh to play me in the movie version monologue.

Occasionally, out of habit in the past few weeks, I have checked my stats on sitemeter and discovered I had only slightly fewer hits on the days I didn’t post than the days I did. This was quite a liberating discovery, actually. Perhaps my fears of disappointing too many readers are a bit overblown. I suspect that with anything I do or don’t write I’ll disappoint the majority of my visitors, who appear to be accidental tourists stumbling upon my domain. Whether or not I labor and deliver (and believe me, sometimes the painful child-birth metaphor fits) thought-provoking and original prose or not, some dude in Singapore with the Google query “what does a goiter feel like?” is going to find my website less than informative.

Then one day my laptop began to show symptoms of a terminal illness (graciously breaking the secret oath of all electronics and appliances by doing so two weeks BEFORE the extended warranty expired) and had to be sent in for repairs. I hope to never relive the moment when I was forced to put my brain into a box with only two pieces of Styrofoam to protect it, seal it up with tape and a note that said “please be kind to my brain as I am rather stupid without it” and leave it out on the porch for the UPS man to collect. Perhaps I should have paid the extra fee for the ice-pack, cooler, and medical life-flight service.

Anyway, the longer I went without writing, the more I dreaded catching up and making excuses for my absence. How silly is that? It’s MY BLOG isn’t it? Why should I feel obligated to write or even compelled to say anything in particular? So today, I declare myself free from the need to be interesting. Or funny. Or meaningful in any way. Some days I hope the muse inspires me to craft lovely little nuggets. Other days, be forewarned, I may post doggy turds.

Please forgive me if some days I have lots of time to write and on other days, I have the length of Elmo’s World to mention a random thought that just occurred to me.

Today, for example, I’m wondering why our mailman, who drives 5 miles an hour on the wrong side of the street and has to park at a new mailbox every 50 feet, fastidiously buckles and unbuckles his seatbelt with every stop. This strikes me as rather odd.

That’s it. Nothing more or less blogworthy than that.

I’m now going to sit on my hands and post this thing with my nose to avoid trying to make something more fragrant out of this particular turd.