On False Alarms

Well, this is awkward.

So there I was the other morning, more certain than ever that the right thing to do was give up this thing, do something with more purpose. “Enough goofing around, Hope,” is what I said to myself. In the weeks leading up to that post, I’d written five others that were stupid, three that went nowhere and a list that was a truer manifestation of “phoning it in” than anything I’d done since college. Deleted ‘em all. Didn’t post ‘em. I must be through here, I thought. Then I wrote that bit about being done.

Not an hour later did I start writing something in my head. Not anything too bright, mind you. Nothing that had  to be written, but there it was, taking up space in my brain, little bits of it shoving their way into conversations with live humans. It was like testing a stand-up routine on unwitting victims. It was a little pathetic, like that uncle you humor at Thanksgiving and count the seconds until he’s gone.

People have said all along that this doesn’t need to be some earth-shattering, mind-blowing treatise on Beauty and Truth, and hopefully I haven’t implied that that’s what I’m after. While I’m still not too comfortable with the amorphous quality of this place I’ve created, it seems it has its uses, if only to free up space in my head and not annoy innocent people. So I’m going to take that discomfort and see what else I can do with it. Who knows what’ll show up here.

I will never, ever do this again, the bailing and then reappearing 72 hours later. If I thought my last post was hard, this is excruciating. If I decide this is over some time in the future, I’ll just slink off into the void.

If you bothered to read this, thanks. Again. In the words of the folks at this nifty site, “Who said forever is better?”