“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
I don’t know what is more troublesome the fact that my first sentence marking my return to the blogging world is so nihilistic or that it so aptly describes my life over the past few months. I’ve oscillated between bouts of frenzied creation for the proverbial man as my perpetual state of under-employment marches towards a sad permanence and being content with doing absolutely nothing in a rather futile attempt to forget that my life has no purpose or direction. Sadly, the latter has been more fun that I should be willing to admit in such a public forum. I doubt I am alone in this respect as I see an awful lot of people my age hanging around places of leisure when we all know we should really be working (we all walk around with slumped shoulders, a calling card of the “Yep, got laid off earlier this year“ club).
This doesn’t explain why my blog disappeared, however. Long story short (well, not that it was a very long story) is my WordPress database was corrupted by a hackers. It took a few weeks for me to even realize that something was wrong and took longer to find a solution to the problem. Unfortunately, the solution was something akin to burning the crops to the ground to stop the spread of deadly locusts. Like Scarlett vowed at the end of Gone With the Wind, I too beat my breast and declared I would build again … but then I became distracted by Twitter. Just picture Scarlett hammering a few wooden boards for Tara 2.0, but suddenly seeing an already built, shiny new condo across the way. It’s so tiny and clean. I shall call it home now. Yes, I am aware I’ve used fifteen metaphors in the past paragraph to describe blog posts, but that’s how I roll.
And let’s talk about Twitter, shall we? It swallowed me whole. First, I found it a challenge to get my thoughts trimmed down to a lean 140 characters, but as the months progressed, I found myself slowly unable to form thoughts beyond that limit. As someone who took pride in her useless ability to drone on and on about the cultural significance of Dirty Dancing in cinema and the injustice of Kylie Minogue not being a bigger hit maker in the U.S., you can probably figure that this development was troubling. When your mind’s default thought pattern looks something like this: “Got tixs for Mets. Going with friends. AWESOME!” it might be time to step away from mircoblogging. Put your phone down. Step texting. Step away slowly and no one will get hurt. Lengthy, loquacious babble is a dying art, people. Let’s not let it go gently into that good night. It is with that as my rallying cry that I decided it was time to get back to proper blogging. Because life does not have a 140 character limit. Put that on a t-shirt, Tweets on Tees!
As I circle back and hang a left at the burning crops to get back to my original point (I had one, shocking I know), I see this as a new beginning, a new book in my endless volumes of pointless chatter. Hopefully, I will be able to yammer on about an array of different topics. Now that I stand alone among the ruins, I find I sort of like it.
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