I'm Alive

"Thinking about the time I've wasted
And the pleasure we once tasted
Looking up and down this road
I've been here before..."
- Jackson Browne, I'm Alive

Contrary to how I've made it appear by not writing anything here for about the last 6 months, I am alive and well. Actually, I'm doing much better now than I was while I was writing here regularly. The truth is, life caught up with me and I had to answer its call and live as fully as possible. I needed to cut down the number of hours I was spending in front of a computer monitor and do some other things. Now, I am looking forward to starting over. I will be changing my format a bit, possibly on a new blog (that I will link here if I choose to go that route).

“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” - Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

At any rate, I plan to start writing again. I'm not yet sure what form it will take, but I recently read something that affected me greatly. I was reading the introduction to something (I know longer remember what) and the author warned the readers (myself included) that this work was going to be different from everything that went before. The difference, according to that author, was that everything she had previously written, she had written for the benefit of other people. Sure, she was expressing deeply heartfelt and emotional things, baring her soul, and receiving the healing that brings, but her actual writing was never for her. The finished product was always written for the reader response. She would check her feedback, comments on her website and blog, she would fret about the number of people who were reading, agonize over those who criticized her work, and celebrate over those who loved it. At some point, she realized that what she truly needed to do was to write for herself. She wrote that if you write to please yourself, the reading audience would take care of itself.

At that point, I realized why I had become uninspired and stopped writing.

Now, I am ready to begin anew. So, if my blog is less friendly, more impersonal for readers, that is the reason. You see, I am no longer doing this because the approval of a community of readers makes me feel better about myself. I am writing because I have a story that wants to be told.

I am doing this for me.

"Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?" - Mr. Blonde, Reservoir Dogs