An Enormous Eggnog Latte

Well, I’m back.

I was once told that the most important thing in life is just showing up.  I stopped showing up for things back in 2020.  Most of us did.  For me, that was the last time I shot my shot here in November, for NaBloPoMo, or what also goes by NanoPoblano in that portion of the bloggy-sphere I affix myself to.  I stopped showing up, not because of some hardship, or an unavoidable change in plans, but simply because I got bored.

Bored with my own story.

I discovered that it’s easy to get bored with your own story, because not only are you the one telling it, you’re also the one who lived it.  And I don’t know about you, but once I’ve lived a something, it really better have been damn spectacular to get me to relive it again.  And while my 2020 was different than what I expected it to be… and whose wasn’t?… what it was not, is spectacular. 

In brief, mine was UNEMPLOYMENT, PANDEMIC, CANCER.  Oh, and the Dodgers won the World Series, which was not boring, to me, but there was no way I was going to write for 30 consecutive days about the Dodgers winning the World Series for the first time in 32 years.

You’re welcome.

So, in November, 2020, after 17 straight days of trying to, in different and entertaining ways, tell the story of my “funny cancer”, I got bored.  I got bored, and quit. 

Also, you’re welcome.

So now, what is there for me to write about that I won’t find boring, and you, by extension, won’t find boring before I do?  I’m not sure.  Yet.  I know my life is different than it was on November 17 of 2020.  I’ve moved three times, the last time, all the way from California to New York, and I could probably write at least 10 posts about how, on April Fool’s Day, the day I arrived on Long Island, I couldn’t understand why the thousands and thousands of trees along the 495 looked like barren telephone poles, rising from the mud on each side of the big road.  But, guaranteed, that would bore you and me, so before I start down that literary goat path… yeah, anyway… New York.  And, after the leaves began to make their appearance later in the spring, I realized that I was, without really planning on it, writing another collection of poetry.  But this time, things felt different, they read different, when I read them back to myself, aloud.  I mean, it was my words, my voice, but some shit had shifted from the last time I put things together between the covers of book.

And maybe that’s what I’m actually doing here now.  I’m saying “Hi” to you again, whoever you is, this time.  This time, when I might have something to say that means more to you than “funny cancer”, or some hyper-broody poetry, written a decade ago, by someone who thought they had it all figured out, then figured out that they hadn’t. 

But enough about me, or we’ll both get bored before day 17.

This time around, besides sharing me, I want to get to know you.  Because, since this blog life is more about sharing than it is about what I had for breakfast… which, so far, is two cups of black coffee and one enormous, homemade eggnog latte… but you didn’t need to know that.  This time around, I will be writing, sure, but I will also be reading.  I will be reading you.

And that’s enough about me for today.

But do me a favor.  After you’ve read this, or, I don’t know, after you get bored with reading this and quit, leave me a word about yourself in the comments.  Just a line about who you are, and why you’re here.  And tell me what you don’t think is boring about yourself.  Because that’s going to make a good first day for both of us.

And with all that, I’ll see you tomorrow.