Tap…tap. Is this thing still on?

It’s been a very long time.

Revisiting the habit of writing is like trying to resume any exhausting activity that’s good for you, like aerobic exercise, or stretching. So easy to abandon, and difficult to pick up once more. However, the exhaustion is a false impression (one hopes), and the benefits for health, mental and physical, assert themselves in time. It only feels like heavy lifting at first.

Were there good reasons to have neglected this blog? No. And yes.

No, in that I’ve had access to ample time. Since my last post I’ve retired. The nature of time has changed remarkably for me. My days are full of it.

But yes, too, in that the trickle of passing time has become a rushing torrent; a veritable fire hose blasting past me. I brew my morning coffee, blink, and watch the sun setting.

A friend resumed writing after a long hiatus just today, and inspired me to do so, too. He spent a few words reflecting on why he’d stopped, but concluded saying, “I will end the excuses here. I simply did not write, which is also ok.”

Retirement is as full of needful and wasteful actions as working life, except one gets to chose them. That, and choosing the proportion of necessary to capricious effort falls to me. I’ve not been a good steward of those choices consistently. While it’s fine to review a news-page in the morning, do I really need to read WaPo, the New York Times, and The Guardian, all three? Do I absolutely need to hear what Stephen Colbert said last night? AND Seth Meyers, too?

Maybe I should clear the pine straw off the roof first.

And, certainly, I should resume the practice of writing, and maybe sharing that with the winds of the internet. More content to follow!

Thank you for listening.