Life happens
Editor/kid #3/social media expert. This is all your fault!!
Early in my participation in the blog writing game, with light bulbs illuminating and all kinds of blog-related opportunities exploding in my mind, I asked my editor/daughter Alyssa about how often she thought I should post. I had no idea what her answer might be. Daily? Monthly?? Bi-annually??? And also no idea of the repercussions her answer would carry. She casually remarked something like “Oh, every week or so should be about right...” So, in my naive initial enthusiasm, I figured I would try to hold to that frequency and see what happened. I should have known something obvious—like life itself, would happen. I made it about 10 weeks before the overwhelming convergence of moving from our house of 23 years to a new, smaller town life, along with Christmas, family and all things holiday related brought many previously important parts of my life, including the blog, to a screeching halt. The ethereal and self-cleansing act of blog writing was moved to some distant back burner, only to be replaced by things more necessary—fixing up a new house, the odd ebb and flow of my work (which thankfully recently turned up several notches), trying to manage both my aging father’s and my own lives etc., etc.
Now I’m not sure how many people actually noticed that the lifeinthetalllane.com blog faucet, running at full force since the middle of October, abruptly shut off just before the double holiday whammy. But dry up it did, and not for the absence of water running through it. Maybe more like for the lack of an appropriate faucet. “Oh yeah, aren’t you that guy that wrote a few blogs back in late 2017?” Gone without a trace?! In fact, as of this writing one and only one person has asked me when I was going to post again. Fortunately this person, though a recent acquaintance, holds quite a bit of weight because she is a former English teacher. (You know who you are—the fact that you asked means a lot. Thanks for reading!)
In my hiatus, which has, truth be told, dragged on much longer than I thought it would, I have learned several things:
—Since it seems I’m doing this for me (and maybe one other person) I will do it when I choose and when the time required to post doesn’t destroy something of higher priority in my fairly complicated life. The weekly post regimen was a good exercise in blog discipline, but I’m not going to stress if I can’t publish on my given deadline day. I now know for the most part nobody else will stress either, and that's fine. Seems like almost every day there’s some tidbit of a situation that happens to me that could inspire a new blog entry out of my self acknowledged ADD'd out mind. I note those and keep them for future reference whenever possible. That’s not the problem.
--I’ve come to realize I’m somewhat torn as I go back and forth on what this thing should actually be: Is it a take on current affairs either in my life or more broadly? Maybe. Yeah I know I wrote about what I was thankful for around Thanksgiving—by the way, as of this writing the car is STILL not fixed...Or is it more of a mining exercise—digging the odd tidbits from the depths of my mind that someone hopefully might take an interest in. Realistically, probably a little of both.
Hard to believe that this vehicle falls into the same class as the trusty Suburban. Turtle indeed!
--Certainly the things that happen to me and that I think about form the fabric of this blog. I may eat my own words, but at this point I don’t plan to write directly about, for example, what Santa Claus might have brought me. (Unless he brings me something really cool like the Lamborghini SUV I recently saw at the Auto Show. The same Lamborghini that, when I texted a picture of to one of my daughters, then responded back that it looked like a turtle. That would be a zero to 60 mph in like 2.6 second turtle...)
Well...
So please bear with me as I fight for my sea legs in this (still new to me) attempted equilibrium of writing at least semi-regularly. I do find value and importance simply in the act of writing. The jotting down and writing of things that pop into my head is the easy part. That can and does happen any time, day or night thanks to the trusty iPhone, never far from my grasp. It’s putting it all into a presentable form so that someone other than me might actually make sense of it of all that holds me up. Although enjoyable and a great learning experience, it's a lot of work! Please stay tuned. I hope that even as I write about seemingly nothing that these words might have some meaning and connection for at least someone out there.