On Our Way

The cat is at grandma's. Gifts have been purchased, wrapped, mailed. A's family has been fed entertained, cleaned up after, and fed again. Unwanted hairs below my waistline have been removed, appropriate sized warm-weather clothes for all of us retrieved from boxes and shelves, plants watered, adjustable rate home mortgage refinanced out of, baby vaccinated, day care arrangements for January almost set, bags almost packed. All of our bed- and waking-times have been graaaadually moved forward an hour and a half. We're leaving this afternoon for the awaited and (somewhat) feared tropical family Christmas gathering.

I'm planning, while we're gone, to avoid not just you personally but the whole entire Internet. I'm thinking of it as a media fast* a la Julia Cameron.

I've been feeling funny lately about what I write here. I know that the act of writing does something good for my mind and soul, and writing a blog is not all that different from the journal writing I'd already been doing for ages, but ... being on this end of the fast, I can't articulate the "but" yet. I want it to be different somehow. What better opportunity than a couple of weeks at the beach to avoid thinking about it for a while until some clarity emerges.

I'll miss you, though, Internet. I hope your end-of-December festivities are lovely and rejuvenating. And can you tell me something? This is a well-worn question, i'm sure, but why are you here? I mean, why do you write your blog (if you do), and why do you read blogs? I'm interested to know and will try really really hard not to cheat on my fast to come back and hear what you have to say.



*This fast is made more challenging by the fact that bloggy friends both real and imagined are expecting babies momentarily, and every non-Luddite bone in my body cringes at the thought of not recieving the news in real time. Will just uniformly send out vibes of easy labor and healthy babies until I know all is well.