Sunday, October 19, 2003

I’m wondering, gentle reader, how I should break my weeklong communicative fast. Should I begin with an apology as I have many times before? Should I pretend that nothing happened, that all my responsibility–my obligation to correspond regularly with you–actually rests on your shoulders? Perhaps your eyes deceived you, and I updated on a day-by-day basis. You just didn’t see anything beyond a pithy quote from Mr. Martel.

But we all know that isn’t the case. I also know that I will not apologize. I’ll just tell you what’s on my mind, and you can decide for yourself. I am telling you this not because I want to stab you in the eye with the Sharp Toothpick of Angst, but because I think you deserve an explanation. We are past the point where an apology will suffice. What I’m trying to avoid here is misplaced gravity. At the end of the day, this is just another site in the wide E-xpanse–nothing more, nothing less.

So, here we are. Part of my reticence stems from work. I’ve given a large piece of myself to the heady world of Internet advertising. Wait, did I say advertising? What I meant was “sweepstakes.” On many days I come home physically drained, a veritable picture of apatheticism driven to succeed in a completely fabricated world. This, however, isn’t my real answer. I’m beginning to realize I don’t enjoy reading and writing as much as I once did. And that’s a sad, sad realization, let me tell you. If you play an instrument, write, or paint, or make music, then you’ll understand the horror of passion gone pale and dry. It’s like pouring yourself into something, only to realize one fine morning that the “something” was a drain.

The question, then, is how to salvage an interest from the daily press of the mundane. Right now, I’ve got one answer in hand: to do, do, do. And now, I’m off to make paper pop-ups appear. More on that later!