Re-Beginnings

I've been doing this blog thing since 2003 in another space, and ran out of steam in the last year. I’ve decided it’s time to get back to it, here on blogger instead of my old page, (which will stay as my archive, if you're interested) because I started to realize that all the housekeeping around doing my own html was fun, but it kept me from the words and the writing, which are the whole point after all; word after word after word, until they create some shape and turn into something worth keeping. (Now whether this pile of verbiage remains worth keeping, we’ll have to wait and see. Databases have doomed us to such a fantastic ability to keep everything. So much easier to store ether.) It’s not like the world is going to run out of words, and on bad days I think, well, who needs mine added to the clamour, but on good days I think well yes, because my peculiar brain has things to say too. Peculiar, as in unique. We’re all unique. Right?

This post is a first start in the deluge, word after word after word, and I hope that it’ll get me going again in pulling out the nuggets that deserve shaping. In the meantime, I do love to hear what I think, and often can’t tell you unless I’ve written it down first.

I'd set this space up two years ago when I went rambling with my new love. I guess I've been rambling since, as much of the focus went out of my writing during this time. (You know how love makes things all fuzzy and unfocused). Then also my father died in February, and estate business, not to mention a complicated kind of grief, set in. What’s the point of a life, that kind of thing.

My relationship with my father was hard to define. Lots of emotion, fractured because the relationship was pretty fractured. He was complex (everyone's complex) and my feelings were complex. I can't be the first person to wash between me, me, me, and realizing it's not about me, I mean if any time should belong to anyone, it should be the person doing the dying, but then why does the me feel so, well, torn up too? And it’s not as facile as saying well, he was your father, so you loved him. I’m not sure of the truth of that. I spent so many, many years not loving him, a mix of hurt/hate. With an admixture of pride, the guy was such a character. And then I’d feel sorry for him; with all he had going, he was such a mess. No wonder he didn’t satisfy as father. And then, in all fairness, can anyone satisfy the father-hunger that kids have? Yeah, complex indeed.

So what brings me back to this place? The writing. It won't go away. The year drifts by, I think I'm looking after other stuff, and the emails get longer, the letters to the editor get more frequent, motor-mouth sets in when I bump into friends/anyone! and I think, well, what is it this picture telling me? Oh, right, write.

I'm going to use this space instead of the old one. I'm a supreme procrastinator, able to throw up distractions at the blink of an eye, and I’ve figured out that all the playing around with html, getting things to fit, and the background set, and remembering code, and feeling clever, means that I don’t get around to actually writing anything. And surely there are people besides me who will want to read what I write. Right? Well, maybe after a bit of focus sets in.