Here’s To The Journey
Not much, thanks. What’s new with you?
Seriously, what can you say after an absence of eleven long months?
There were times during that span I thought I must have had some kind of premonition, that I’d had a little precognitive flash when I put up my post of February 22, 2008, the one explaining the ins and outs of my day job and why it might occasionally keep me away from the blog. Did I know something when I wrote that piece? Had I sensed that I was about to disappear for nearly a year?
Not really, no.
On the other hand, the post did become a convenient excuse, at least during the first few months. When I was being pulled in other directions and starting to feel guilty about neglecting this site, I always had that post to fall back on.
Inner Voice: You really should post something new one of these days.
Other Inner Voice: Don’t worry. You can get to it later. You’ve got time. Remember, you warned them how busy you are and that you might vanish for extended periods. Relax.
After a while, of course, so much time had gone by that even my last post wasn’t enough. A bigger, more thorough, more honest explanation was required. But by then I was in No Man’s Land, a mysterious territory that so many errant bloggers know so well, wanting to get back to it but unsure how to proceed, knowing I would have to come up with a decent cover story but not capable of doing it. Ask anyone who has maintained a Web site for a while but wandered from the path: the longer you stay away, the harder it is to return. The longer you avoid it, the easier it is to keep avoiding it.
There comes a day, however, that the lure of the blog, the siren song of the site, overpowers everything else and you just have to get back to it. And here I am.
Do I have a story, something to explain where I’ve been? Oh, yeah, you bet I do, and believe me, that post from eleven months back only touches the surface. It’s been a year of trauma and drama, tempest and turmoil, most of it far away from the day job. It’s been a year of accidents and illness for those closest to me. It’s been a year of being pushed and pulled in different directions and head-spinning changes and uncertainty and fear and doubt and … well, upheaval.
But I’m not yet ready to tell that story, at least not right here, right now, all in one big chunk. Bits of pieces of it will no doubt spill out over time, and clever readers will surely be able to stitch those fragments together into a workable narrative. So for those of you who are truly curious, I guess you’ve got that to look forward to.
For the rest of you, let’s just wipe the slate and make a clean start, forget the last eleven months and focus on what’s ahead. I’m here. I’m ready to go. I’m happy you’re here, too. And I’m excited about getting back to regular communication with you, to maintaining these pages, to doing all of this cyberspacey kind of stuff, which is really more fun than most folks should be allowed to have.
Here’s to the journey … and let’s get started.
Tags: Back in Action, Blog, Siren Song of the Site
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