My heart for blogging is gone.
Blogging isn't what I thought it was. It's just one big, massive cyber Tupperware party, everyone trying to get in on some profits. I don't like going to Tupperware parties, and I would never host one.
I thought blogging was a form of friendship, of connection, but it isn't. Cyberspace doesn't give you friendships. It's too busy, too packed with distractions. I can get on my computer with the intention of researching the light exposure needs for a cryptomeria, or to order a birthday present, and two hours later, I'll look up from a news story about possible COVID therapies and wonder where my day has gone. Panicked, I jump away from the screen and rush back to whatever I had been doing before, only to realize that I failed to complete my initial intentional task at the computer. Then ambivalent dread seizes my heart. Do I risk going back and losing another two hours of my day? Or do I abort attempts at completing the task I had set for myself?
With so many distractions, obviously we do not use social media--blogs or otherwise--for the tending of relationships. When one small voice in the entire electronic nexus drops out, there are so many others clamoring to fill the void, nobody would ever think to check in with a, "Hey. Where have you been? Are you okay?" It's a lonely, frantic crowd, that online congregation.
Fall is here. In North Carolina, fall is mild. It has been a lovely time to garden. We've been moving shrubs, transplanting irises, tearing out zinnias and cosmos. On Saturday, I transplanted three baby cedar trees, volunteers. I think cedars are captivating, and their name is, too. JRR Tolkien said that the most beautiful sounding words in the English language are, "Cellar Door." If that's true, then the reflected sounds in the name, "Cedar Laura," would make a most lovely moniker for a baby girl.
I've also had a resurgent interest in cooking. Who knows how long that will last. We got a grill at the end of September, finally replacing the one we left behind a year ago when we moved, and that has been a blessing. When I don't feel like cooking, Shawn can make hamburgers now. We stock giant sacks of frozen Tater Tots to complete these meals.
I should be blogging about things I'm thankful for. That was a good discipline and a good practice, Novembers past. It always raised my spirits even as the days shortened into brief surges of light in the darkness. But currently I find myself overwhelmed at the prospect of teasing apart my gratitude for God's gifts from pride in what I have, and from unintentional reminders to others of what they may not have.
Sometimes it is easiest to say nothing.
I tried to create a gluten-free recipe for pineapple-cherry-almond muffins today, but they baked up flat-topped. I will eat them anyway, and be thankful. The batter was tasty, so I have a certain amount of modest hope for flavor in spite of appearance.
I had intended to break my streak of once-a-month blogging and actually try to do daily thankful posts in November, but you can see how that has turned out. If this is, indeed, the only post I write in November, as per my current pattern, then it is, indeed, a lame post. And no pictures, either.
But there you have it.
