Snowfall
Does anyone still blog anymore? I have a feeling the answer is no. And yet here I am again, more than a year since my last post. I don't expect I have any readers left. And yet here I am.
My reasons for going away had to do with time, work, emotional distraction, and growing questions about writing into the blogger-void in the first place, Some of my readers knew me well from my real life. Some had never met me at all. I'd had an experience, not long before my posts trailed off, in which I'd become a regular and supportive reader of a blog by a person who turned out to be a plagiarizing fraud. This person's blogger persona had become so real to me (and to hundreds of others) that when I found out he was a fiction, it was rattling to say the least. I started to wonder about the handful of strangers out there (let's face it, it was only a handful) who thought they knew me through my posts. While I'm not a fiction, I've presented only selective sides of myself here. I think they're honest. But people who have never met me who think they know me do not. That dynamic started to feel -- on a level I wasn't even able to articulate to myself fully -- kind of fraudulent in itself.
But that's only part of what happened. My relationship with D. grew, my parents demanded more and more of my time, and my job had changed dramatically (even more so this year, with layoffs roughly doubling my work load).
For more than a year I've barely looked at this blog, which was such an important part of my life for nearly three years -- a time in which I was single and groping for a way to be after the end of a relationship.
So the abandoned blog felt like a friend I'd fallen out of touch with but didn't quite know how to reconnect with. The more time passes, the more awkward it is to call or e-mail and set up that coffee date.
Today is December 19, 2009. I'm 48 years old. The snow outside is falling in feet, like something I haven't seen since childhood. On a day like this, the footsteps you imprinted a mere hour ago are now little more than suggestions that you were once out walking. So you just step into the snow again.
posted by Billy at 5:41 PM
5 Comments:
i'm happy to see you again, or rather, your words.
i understand your profound disappointment about that blogger. however, having been involved with the internet through usenet groups and irc i'm became used to the concept of people faking who they are. it's not that i liked being duped by that blogger (yes, i followed her too) but as disappointed as i was, i'm also very cognisant of how easy it is for a person to present themselves as someone else.
no one on the internet knows me well. they know what i am willing to talk about on my blog, in facebook and on twitter. that's only a small slice of who i really am, and what i do. part of it is because i do value some privacy in my life, the other is i can't talk about a large aspect of my life, work, because of confidentiality regulations and the official secrets act of canada because i work with federal parolees.
but i am glad that you came back. even if it's just once in a while, i very much enjoy reading about you and what you're willing to share with us.
take care.
I use Google Reader and was glad to see your blog entry "pop in." Good to hear from you again. Hope you'll continue to comment on your view from the mantelpiece. -- dpv
It is very good to have you blogging again.
yay that you're blogging again. (I love that image in the last paragraph, too...)
Still here and reading! Hope you had a lovely holiday season, and wish you all the best for 2010.
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