Quiet but not Idle - Breaking the Silence

I know things have been quiet on this blog. I’ve been involved in a lot of projects that don’t bear too much conversation.

• Remodeling a bathroom after some disastrous work done by an incompetent carpenter.
• Cleaning 50 years of debris out of a half-basement so we can have a leaky oil tank replaced.
• Waking the lawn-tractor from her long slumber and mowing the lawn.
• Endless trips to the dump that feel like they’ll never end. (It’s amazing how much stuff you can fit in the back of a Prius, but a tractor-trailer might suit us better.)
• Family visits and obligations.
• Scanning in and then discarding a massive file cabinet’s worth of old journals and writing.

All of this on top of a 40 hour work week and 20 hours’ weekly commute.

Needless to say, I’m feeling tired. Drained might be a better word for it.

The time I spent going through all those old journals has me acutely aware that the world doesn’t need to read anything more about the reasons I haven’t been writing.

It kind of boils down to that old saw: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I’m still enjoying your blogs and stories when I can, between naps on the train.

I miss a lot of the old-time regulars who have moved on. Has anyone heard from @richq11 or @everittdmickey? I don't like it when the cantankerous go quiet. I wish @atopy would stop in with a quick hello, and I miss the smile and laugh of @sandrina.life. There's so many more.

My folder of bookmarked favorites is full of tumbleweeds. I need to make some time to meet new people.

And I'm still wandering the city streets and collecting photographs. Here, I've even captured myself reflected in a woman's sunglasses - an accomplishment I've only managed to pull off once before, and that time with a man.

We'll see what the summer brings. Work is going great and on the whole things are looking up. But I do miss writing. It's always been this compulsion I can't shake. Which I've often felt is the only legitimate reason to do it - writer's write because they can't quit, even if they want to.

There are worse addictions, I suppose.

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