Absence

It’s amazing sometimes how you go along and life just takes over, so when you look up you realize that you forgot – or just didn’t make time – and something got left behind.

So it is with this Blog.  A year ago today I did my last entry – and, incidentally, thanks to those of you who asked – I did not succumb to shellfish allergies.  For those of you who didn’t ask – well, I’ll remember that!

The last few weeks before I stopped writing were kind of chaotic (more than normal) and the Muse chose to visit others.  When I write and “hit the groove” (undoubtedly an ancient reference to when music came on plastic or Bakelite disks and an actual needle touched it to transfer the sound to the speaker) it flows.  I sit down, begin to type and all sense of time is lost.  When I look up it’s either been minutes or hours and I have some content – usually enough that I need to cut it down.  I feel relaxed and satisfied with what I’ve accomplished.

When the Muse doesn’t come, though, these sessions are pure torture.  Words are elusive and avoid falling into place.  Grammar and punctuation rules that I routinely follow sit just out of reach, available, but it takes an effort to get them like a television remote that has been magically transported across the room sometime after you have tucked your blanket around your feet.  Spelling becomes phonetic and occasionally devolves to chaotic.

Part of the reason for the delay is that I just wasn’t in a happy place in my mind for a while.  The topics which were inspiring weren’t light and entertaining, they were tending toward the dark and disappointing.  Someone commented that “CornerAt8th” seemed to have become the “CurmudgeonAt8th”, and that’s not what I wanted.

The other problem with that is that it’s exhausting to always be in a rage.  You can’t concentrate, and when you finish instead of being invigorated you’re drained.  My way of coping with this is avoidance.  It’s not a perfect way to deal with things, but it’s worked a lot of times.  There truly are many things that, like an annoying little brother, will go away if you ignore them.

Overall, I’d rather turn an average event sideways and laugh at it.  There’s enough dreary news in the world and I think we need to laugh at ourselves – and others, because heaven knows that there are people that sorely need to be called out and laughed at in public – to try to keep some sense of sanity.

The other thing is that a person can only stare at a computer screen for so long before you go “snow blind”.  Prior to the break, my real job has entailed lots of document drafting.   Not the kind where you can build on earlier projects, change the names and move on, but the kind where you have to slog through each and every sentence in every paragraph to make sure that you’re consistent throughout and that you’ve covered all the points you need to address.

During the 4^th of July week in 2012, I generated about 48 pages of that kind of content on three different projects, so by the time I quit each day the thought of looking at the computer again kind of made me queezy.

It’s been a year, though, and it’s time to suck it up and start again.

Besides, I have all these opinions saved up to share.