I'm better now... want to buy this bridge? My recent vacation was not taken in the most elegant way, hm? I suppose I should have hung a sign that said, "Gone Chopin--Back in a Minuet."

I stopped blogging because, frankly, too many people were caring about me. This seems like an odd thing, I know (an odd thing... can't you tell I think myself a writer, with word-choices like that?), but on bad days I look on this as less entertainment than therapy, and somehow therapy seems more useful if it's screamed to the world rather than stuck in a dark corner of a hard drive. Hell, once I remember I typed out (this was in eighth grade, and I had a computer, but I liked to use an actual manual typewriter) a missive against my Awful Life, including some choice insults of my dad's then-girlfriend, and I left it sitting on my desk where I knew full well my dad would see it. He thought it was really funny and clever, which was not precisely my intention.

Anyway, I clearly have always enjoyed airing out the dirty linen of my addled brain in public. And it may sound ingenuous, but I really don't care about the "come on Squelch, get together, you're a good man" school of replies. I mean, they're appreciated, sure; and I'm glad that people care about me. But I'd far rather hear people's reactions to, say, my memoir experiment or a really clever story (although that last one was linked to, I must admit). When people write to me trying to cheer me up, it just seems like pity.

Of course, whenever someone compliments me, it seems like pity.