In February, I decided I was going to start posting again. I did a couple, but it became abruptly clear to me that I needed to answer for my absence in some way. (Why? And to whom? I don’t have great answers for these questions.)

I so badly needed to answer for my absence, for whatever reason, that I felt I couldn’t just get back into making any sort of regular posting without it. So I worked on a post where I aired out some of the struggles that kept me from writing or posting, explored some of my hangups, and otherwise flogged myself for the better part of 1200 words. I told myself that posting it would be like clearing the blockage in a pipe — all the backed-up gunk would come flooding out and things would be good as new again.

Problem is, even in writing the post, it felt incredibly self-indulgent, and whiny, and poor-me-ish, in ways that even now I find embarrassing. Which in some ways is fair: after all I’m a middle-aged white guy whose life is relatively together and secure — what right have I to complain about anything that’s not going particularly my way? There are people out there with Real Problems.

In other words, I was Being a Little Bitch, to give you a snippet of my self-talk.

Still, I wrote it out and planned to post it, but even posting it felt indulgent somehow. So it’s saved. It’s in the drafts. I could share it out at any time if I think it’ll help. But for now, I’m just hoping that the pipes have been cleared just by the exercise of having written it.