Back in the Saddle

So ....

I've been missing from the blogosphere for a bit. Seven years, actually. Last time I posted was back in April 2010. How do I explain my absence?

A big reason was a season in addiction recovery. Helping first myself, and then others, to discover the wisdom in working the Twelve Steps. More about that, another time.

Another? Facebook. Everyone I knew ended up over there, and unless your Blog was, well, famous, one's polemics, heresies and nonsensical musings were more likely to be seen and possibly even read there than tucked away in a Blog somewhere.

So, Mike, you're back. Given the above, why?

Reason #1: Facebook is like living in New York City. In my neck of the woods, in fact, it's like living just off Times Square. Crowded, loud, sometimes distasteful, and full of vendors hawking their wares. Vendor advertising, designed to look like Facebook posts, often charming and entertaining or geared to inform, warn or educate, crowds the airwaves. At least a quarter of what shows up on my Facebook page is paid for.

Reason #2: It's often deeply divided in its politics, its religious affections (and lack thereof), and in nearly every other way you can think of. On almost any topic, a denizen can post on Facebook a comment that asks, advocates, objects to or merely questions almost anything under the sun and then get attacked, sometimes very unkindly, from nearly every other possible point of view.

Reason #3: When it's not like #2, it's sometimes the opposite: an unreserved love fest, in which everything one says (or, often, borrows and reposts), no matter how poorly thought out or ill-conceived, is applauded, veritably rejoiced over, reposted and applauded.

Reason #4: Like most writers, I find the din of the marketplace distracting. Lately the tone of that din has been, well ... somewhat depressing. I've spent less and less time in the Facebook world, because it's difficult to find my true friends on the crowded streets of that Big City. For a number of months — almost a year — I've posted almost nothing at all on Facebook.

But I'm interested again in writing. And I've wanted to get away somewhere a bit quieter to do it. In the old days, a writer would take off to the mountains, and live in a borrowed cabin, and peck away on an old Royal typewriter. I wanted the digital version of that mountain getaway. An online cabin.

That's when I remembered my old Blog, Embracing the Shadow. 

Honestly? I had almost forgotten it. But revisiting it this week has been like coming home. Or rather, to keep the metaphor going, arriving at a borrowed cabin near Grand Lake, Colorado, the stars shining, the air cool (it is actually 2 a.m. as I write this) and ... breathing.

I'll visit Facebook's Times Square to let folks know they can visit me here. But this is where I'm spending the majority of my writing time. Those who come here will have to expend that extra bit of effort to (figuratively speaking) negotiate the mountain roads to my cabin in the sky and pay me a visit. Digitally speaking, that won't mean much more than bookmarking my Blog. But those who do will have made the journey none the less. My true friends will no doubt manage it. And for that, I'll be grateful.