As I sit here with delicate piano music wafting about me and caressing my skin like no other lover can, Kako resting against my right arm as she dozes lazily atop the desk, Kazon wrapped comfortably around my shoulders just as an old throw might when it has become a dear friend, and thunder beginning to sing its threatening refrain as dark clouds loom to the southwest like so many lightless specters, I ponder the future of this once busy home, this blog, this online journal that extends my constant writing to yet another medium.  You see, poppets, time is short and I simply do not have enough hours in a day now to continue apace as I have in years past.  I have expounded and ranted and created and lamented and a great many other things for almost four and a half years.  Yet all things end, do they not?  And most certainly all things change.

So the time has come to revisit my intent and energy for this endeavor.  I find both wanting, lacking the substance necessary to maintain the tempo I set for myself.  Therefore, an era now ends.

Daily blogging will no longer be an impetus, a need, a desire.  Rather, I will post when I post.  No other explanation of the schedule can be applied.  I will allow my heart and mind to wield the power over when and what.  For too long I have driven this course by way of an innocent yet inescapable obligation which only I could know.  Somehow I felt I must do this and that, and do them without fail lest I disappoint someone other than the one person for whom I blog—me.

Just one month ago I said this to Wayne:

I’ve been writing journals for most of my life, and I’ve never done it for others.  It’s for me.  It’s cathartic, linguistic exercise, and a way for me to understand myself and the world around me—by exploring it all with words and photos.

I think of this blog in the same light.  I do it for me.  Although it brings me pleasure to know someone might enjoy what I’ve written or a photograph I’ve taken, this is nothing more than an extension of me, a different venue for the journaling I’ve been doing for more than thirty years.  If someone doesn’t like what I post, there’s nothing I can do to change that fact.  If I spent my time developing content based on what others wanted, I’d hate it and would promptly stop blogging.

Unfortunately, and much to my chagrin, I find I have allowed this extension of my offline journaling to become less of a personal endeavor and more of a play, one acted out on a global stage, one designed and performed for an audience.  And I despise what it has become.  More importantly, I resent my own being for letting a passion become a façade.  Even now I question the mask I wear, and I ponder its truth—or lack thereof—in light of the introspection I have carried out in recent weeks.

Random Thoughts?  They end today.  I will continue to utilize these meaningful, poignant, applicable, laughable, and otherwise pertinent quotes as is appropriate, but offering them for the sake of a post now ends with the dull thud of a bad habit dropped effortlessly to the ground.

Everything else?  Again, when and if.  Meaningful content takes precedence over mechanical content.  Read into that what you will.  Dare I cast a gaze backward along time’s narrow beam into the past, I embarrass myself with how far astray I have gone, how fabricated I sound.

I’m not giving up on blogging.  I’m not quitting.  But I’m certainly not viewing it as an obligation or tedious need.  Not anymore.  Other things will matter more now and in the future.  My focus is on The Kids.  That much is certain.  I want to spend more time on Dreamdarkers, then End of the Warm Season, and then whatever else comes next.  I want to see family and friends more often.  And soon I shall embark on the path to relocate away from Dallas and closer to—if not quite near—the family farm, to escape humanity’s cold and heartless concrete jungles in favor of nature’s delightful meaning.  This too will require more of my time and focus.

Keep in mind, however, blogging is only one part of my journaling.  I have kept for more than thirty years a written diary of my emotions, my thoughts, my very being, and this is as important, if not more so, than is blogging.  I have always felt my journals were private, expressions of spirit and synapses that no one would ever see, yet somehow I fell under the spell of treating my blog differently.  Shame on me.  No more, I say, no more.

When first I began this, I posted only when moved to do so.  I believe that made the posts more meaningful, more creative.  Now they have become a compulsory mishmash of gobbledygook and forced imagination.  I want to share my thoughts and show you the world as I’ve seen it, only I don’t want to do so because I feel I must find within me something to post each day even if my time could be spent elsewhere.  Therefore, I hope returning to my blogging roots will somehow engender better content.  That remains to be seen, but therein lies my hope.

I expect I will still offer something here several times per week, if not almost daily.  It’s just that obligating myself to do so each time the sun rises no longer will drive my activities.  Instead, I will let the content form at will and as appropriate.

As much for you as for me, take but a moment to revisit something I wrote in February of this year.  It reminds me of why I started blogging, and what blogging should mean and be.

On that note, let me begin again.  Let me find—nay, rediscover my roots in this thing.  Let me offer that which compels and moves me, that which touches me deeply in shallow places, and gift me with a bit of indulgence as I refocus my efforts on posting only at the behest of creativity instead of mechanics.