Pleased to Meet Me

"Melissa wants to talk to you about blogging," she said after swallowing her first bite of the evening's meal.

"What about?" He tears another bite from his cheeseburger.

Dipping her burger into a small lake of ketchup on her plate: "She was curious why you don't do it anymore. She hasn't gotten to know you this past year."

Through a mouthful of food: "It's all there."

"What's all there?"

"Me. It's in the archives." He waves his burger like he doesn't even know it is in his hand. At his right side, the old dog watches the food intently. In the kitchen, the young dog rests on the floor.

"But she doesn't know what you're up to."

"What I'm up to? Well, not blogging, for one." He remembers the burger and takes another bite.

"Why not?"

***********

That's a good question. Why not? I have a few answers there: I got bored, I had too much else to do, I didn't think anything I had to say was worth hearing, I had a general weariness with the world of social media. I sometimes feel like we're all out here shouting our own statuses and updates, but not really listening to anyone else. As a general rule, that is. I know that many of you will claim to having made a wealth of connections (and deep ones, too) out here in the wilds of the worldwide web, but, mostly, I just feel like I am standing in the mall food court and two hundred people (that I know) are yelling at me and handing me photographs as they pass by. But, after a short conversation about it last night with Monkey, in which I basically made it clear that I was not going to revive the practice, here I am. Go figure. And I don't know if this will be the first post of a continued Renaissance of Central Standard or if it is the sole post of 2011, but here it is.

It's funny how your mind changes, when you let it. Really, last night, this was the last thing I thought I would be doing this morning. Hell, even as I sat down and opened the lap top, I was not preparing to write. But, here I am. And it is good. Good to write, good to think, good to build one word from another--one sentence from another--to put something together. It is also good to change one's mind, to do something even you didn't expect. This is, as most of our acts are, a small thing, but all of those small things add up to the big thing we call our life (which in many ways isn't that big a thing, either--like Emily Saliers says, "it's only life, after all"). Do I feel like I have found significance? No. Hell, if I need a blog to find significance, I think I have bigger problems. Do I feel like I am no longer shouting in the wilderness? No, I completely do feel like I am shouting in the wilderness (an even larger, denser, and darker wilderness), but, right now, I think I want to. Do I feel like I finally have something important to say that everyone wants to hear? Do you know me? But, I realize, if you don't want to hear it, you don't have to.

So, hello , again. I don't know how long I'll be staying. I don't know what I'll be saying. But, I'm raising my small voice, again.