If you don't know where you're going,any road will get you there.

On more than one occasion, I've ignored the temptation, convincing myself the road less traveled appears quiet for a reason. It's unkempt and pitted, littered with debris blown this way on a whim and overrun with weeds grown so hardy and strong, it's as if they believed once upon a time that their lives were rooted in real potential. "We shoulda been contendahs," you can almost hear them say before the wind bows their heads and they fall silent again.

Sometimes a road is abandoned for good reason. Sometimes the place it leads is nowhere good, or the path it takes is rambling, roughshod, reckless.

And sometimes, a road is abandoned for no good reason whatsoever. Laziness. Distraction. Busy-ness. Self-rationalization. No good reasons, every last one of them.

______

Four five months.

Wow. 

Really?

Okay, then. 

So. Words.

That's a good place to start, right? With words? Any words? Just open the post box, start typing, and watch the letters make words that form sentences and BAM! there you go, writing again. Not anything earth shattering or life changing or even thought provoking, but writing, just the same. Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, innermost life to internet web. And look! Before you know it, a paragraph is born.

 Okay. That wasn't as hard as I had convinced myself it would be. Awkward, yes. A little painstaking, sure. But it's over now, and I'm still standing - or still sitting and typing, to put a finer point on it, so hey. Maybe there's hope yet.

Catching up is the impossible dream. So let's not play catch up, all official-like, and say we did. How 'bout it? I say we mind the gap (as it were) by ignoring it altogether. Anything important that was missed will come through eventually, I suppose. And nothing important is what really happens in this space on the best of days, at any rate. 

So. Good-bye May. And June. And July. And August.

Hello, September.

Hello, October.

Hello, Fall.

Which is all sorts of appropriate, really.

Turning the calendar to the first days of autumn always feels like moving my life forward, to physically and mentally, into a new year. A fresh start, to be precise. Primed by a couple of youthful decades spent living by the markers of a throwback, traditional school calendar, the Tuesday after Labor Day has long been my own personal New Year's Day. 

And so it was again this year.

So a very Happy New Year to all of you. From me.

A blank page. A new beginning. 

Here we go.

There's a whole lot of living headed this way.

 I'll try to keep up. 

Comments

[Kim]

This thrills me. Happy tabula rasa to you. (And to me, because I am greedy for your posts.)

[Veenu]

Welcome back!Kind of missed reading your page...(:

[Brian]

Up until a couple weeks ago, I'd posted five time to my blog this year. This past weekend, I blogged thrice.

Welcome back . . .

[Roxanne]

Welcome back! Every time you write, be it a tweet or a full post, I smile to myself. There is something deeply comforting about reading your writing once again. Looking forward to the new words. There is such power to the blank slate...

[Jennifer]

I just keep on hangin' on over here. Can't seem to help myself!

[Hope]

Yay!