I haven't been around here much lately. I just knew the day would come when I'd find myself apologizing for that, which is one reason I hesitated to even start blogging just over a year ago.
When I started TUAK I'd been living completely alone for a little less than five months. Winter was coming on and it promised to be a dark, cold, lonely time. TUAK was my way of sending out a 'voice from the wilderness' - a voice I felt free to speak because I really didn't think anyone would hear it. Paradoxically, the very fact that TUAK has found a loyal audience has both obligated me to go on writing when I didn't feel like it, and constrained the things I felt free to say. Some of you have become real friends of the blog, and to feel like real friends to me. But a person doesn't become a hermit because of his great people skills, you know? The more I get to liking someone as a person, the more I care what he or she thinks of me and so the more I become afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing - which causes me to edit every word and action, which in turn generally screws up the relationship. And so the very thought that I feel friends out there has caused me to put a muzzle on it.
So, you see, it's all your fault. Heh. Yeah - marriages have foundered on that thought.
There's also that small matter of having a life, which by any meaningful measure I didn't a year ago but really do now. I'm not hugely busier than I was then, but the things I'm busy with really do take a lot more of my mental time and leave less for sitting in my quiet lair and rambling on a keyboard.
I hate it when a blog I enjoy goes silent because the writer runs out of things to say, but it happens and it's no one's fault. I have things to say, but I've been having trouble overcoming the desire to not say it. Lately I've been depending on "linky no thinky" posts, and that's no way to do it but it's what I'm reduced to. It's the easy way out. I've spent too much of my life depending on the easy way, and it offends me now.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. I'm just trying to explain where I've been that's been keeping me away from the keyboard.
Actually, turkeys can fly
5 hours ago
7 comments:
O.K. Joel,
I am putting my Mamma's hat on. Friends will accept you as you. Be you, say it, lay it and your friends of the blog will still be capable of breathing after reading it I'm sure.
No one likes every single thing about everyone they call friend or family. I know there are days that I could put a screw driver thru the cattleman's head just because the way he chews, breaths, drives me crazy...but I get over it. (So far and so has he :P ) He has opinions that make me mentaly roll my eyes, language that I cringe at. Big deal. Folks will handle....Flaws, warts, whatever, if you only wrote what someone else likes or agrees with then you would be "them" not you. No need to subliminate yourself that way for "us". IMNSHO
End Mamma sermon, have a great day.
Dang I wish I could spell....
Be yourself Joel, thats why I come here. And don't let us keep you from living your wonderful hermit life! Wyomiles
^What they said. :)
> I become afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing - which causes me to edit every word and action
Oh, and I was afraid you started to lose your edge... :)
Be yourself, we like Joel's blog - not the blog of a dude Joel thinks we like... ;)
Hey man, just be you and do what you do when you feel like doing it.
What they said. Karen
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