My handwritten copy of this post has a series of long, trite series of sentences about not writing. I don’t like it, so I’m not going to type it. That’s how it works. Those words are going to sit in the black hole of my journal, wondering if they, like other lost thoughts will make it past the event horizon of the pages and into real life. The thing is, there’s not really anything I can say about not posting for seven hundred and seventy seven days. There are no words. Alright, realistically, there are words. There are plenty of words that come to mind, apologetic words, words of resignation, and words of excuses. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to hear those words in my head, let alone read them on the screen, since real life is full of such small disappointments, and I don’t want to contribute to those in any way whatsoever. So yes, even though there are words, there are no words. There are no words because I’m not going to say them.
What I can say is that if I had any readers originally, and for a time, I definitely had at least one or two, I drove them off with easy aplomb by not posting. I know what people are thinking, and what the indexing bots are wondering: “Why didn’t you at least re-post articles you found interesting, or better yet, post two line posts next to the same articles that provide no additional insight or content?”. The answer to this question is simple. If I’m going to drive away my readers, I’m going to take the shortest point from a to b. I’m going to flat out do nothing, so that no one is under any illusions about what is going on: for those seven hundred and seventy seven days, absolutely nothing was going on. If, two weeks ago, I had chosen to stop, take my site down, and walk away, I could at least have told people that I had a little-known-but-semi-popular-blog for a period of time, which sounds quasi-respectable until I told them that the content was adventure stories based on my life. However, since I decided to return to my blog, I now have to tell people that I have a blog that used to have readers, but no longer does, even though occasionally my friends’ dogs take pity on me and at least log onto the website to make it look like I’m getting traffic. What can I say. I’m stubborn, and I like a challenge.
When I stopped posting seven hundred and seventy seven days ago, I was recounting the story of the first Pizza Port expedition in one section. I had just got to the place where we were halfway up the mountain, when I stopped. (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-fieldnotes/2008/1/2/the-first-and-last-pizza-port-mountaineering-expedition-day.html ). In the other section, I was midway through describing a blow-by-blow account of a long lost fight. (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-firering/episode-lxxxxiv-failures-to-communicate-usually-lead-to-fist.html ). Good news: in real life, I haven’t been leading that expedition, or fighting that fight all of this time. Spoiler alert: I, and everyone else made it up and off the mountain, and I won the fight. All of this begs the question of what I have been doing all of this time. It’s clear that I didn’t suffer some terrible fate and pass on, as one concerned e-mailer inquired a long long time back. Or did I? After all, wouldn’t it be a harsh fate to pass on, and then be returned to blog about events that had happened back in your actual life to an audience that may not exist? I think I have just hit upon a new, modern twenty-first century version of purgatory. Someone get me the Pope on the pope-phone. Rest assured potential readers: if I am the undead now, I am not nearly as sparkly in real life as vampires have oddly been made out to be.
As to where I have been and what I have been doing, all will be revealed in due time. In fact, at times, it feels like I stepped out of one, comfortable dimension in which everything was moving like a well-maintained clock, to one where the world had no gears, and things moved in a chaotic mess, to one where things moved in surreal backwards steps to wherever I find myself now. Also, I’d ask that you note that the prior sentences are a figurative depiction of my life during the last seven hundred odd days or so, not a literal depiction. I do not actually think that I have traveled between different planes of the multiverse. At least I don’t think that for real yet. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I do think that, so someone can send for the men in the white coats to find me a nice jacket and a comfy padded cell. The good news is that I’m back, and while I’m not necessarily going to pick up where I left off, there is going to be progress that’s not completely disorderly. Don’t worry – what’s going to come is good – I promise. And if it’s not good, since this is a free service, you get a refund of nothing. So strap yourselves in, and get ready to get a glimpse of things past and present, and if we’re lucky, the future.