It’s hard for me to believe how long it has been since I’ve posted — the entire second quarter of 2006 just zoomed by, and I completely fell out of the blogging habit.  In the middle of March I started a six week period of working intensively on my novel, and any other kind of writing felt like a distraction.  And then we went to Paris for the month of May, and Brad did a great job of tracking our time there.  June was a manic month, with literally just three nights at home alone with Brad (June 4th and 5th following our return from Paris and June 27th (the night before heading out for 6 weeks)).  And here we are, in July.  Wheeee.

But there was more to my hiatus than just being busy — after all, I’m always busy.  The commitment to six weeks of concentrated work on The North Side of Trees required a more focused approach than my usual wide range of daily activities.  I worked hard, and I was tired at the end of the days, and definitely didn’t feel like writing any more — and I didn’t have much to say about daily life.  "Went to writing office, wrote, came home," summed things up for just about the entire six weeks.  I’m definitely not alone in this experience of finding that working on a novel is an entirely different thing than blogging.  Blogging had been a great way of keeping the writing juices flowing during times when I wasn’t working much on the novel.  Write, post.  Write, post — without anxiety or worrying about what people might think.  A kind of writing meditation for me.  And it has been an efficient / lazy way of putting energy into a lot of relationships all at one time, which was great for an introvert like me.  I could let my friends and family know what I’ve been doing / thinking without having to spend time on the telephone, which worked well for me.

And so working on other writing was a positive reason for not blogging.

And the clearly negative reason was nasty, personal attack comments both to me, and to Brad, especially around his Boston marathon in April.  Real attacks, not just comment spam, which is annoying, but comments where an actual human (or a marginal facsimile of one) took the time/energy to write really ugly things on my blog.  I’m not a celebrity (nor do I play one on t.v.), but sometimes find myself unsympathetic to their complaints about paparazzi and lack of privacy because of the public nature of the celebrity life.  And so I, in my tiny analogous way, decided that I’m open to the slings and arrows of public opinion if I do public writing, which is what a blog is.  I took a break to see what mattered more to me — avoiding the crap that comes from putting an opinion out into the world, or accepting that there is plenty of Crazy and Angry out there and writing anyway.  I had an email exchange with Fred Wilson about this over a year ago and he encouraged me to ignore the angry crazies and move on — thanks, Fred.

I’m turning off Comments for now — I don’t get a lot of comments anyway, and if you’re my friend or family, you can send me email, which I’ll answer in my usual haphazard way.

And the issue in the middle ground of blogging that I’m still thinking about is that while the unexamined life may not be worth living, a life lived with a constant eye to writing about it isn’t much of a life either.  Seeing one’s life as a means to an end as an observer meant only for writing fodder is one of the admittedly mild "dangers" of writing, and of blogging in particular.  It’s like people who travel with a video camera attached to their faces instead of actually experiencing a place.  It’s some kind of magical "Let’s save this moment for the future" thinking — I just don’t think the writing life works like that.  "Dream dreams, and write them; aye, but live them first."

And maybe that’s why I still haven’t finished The North Side of Trees.  I’m living a great life.. and I’m going back to blogging about it now.

Today is my 39 1/2 birthday.  I’m celebrating by spending the day in my Spruce Street writing office, working on The North Side of Trees.  That’s the short version of a funny tale that involves Carribbean islands and apple orchards and boundaries.  In a long, far flung conversation over afternoon tea in Boston last October with Pamela Daniels, (who I am still stunned to have been fortunate enough to have as my college dean lo these many years ago), she asked me what I needed to be able to finish writing my book and I answered that I thought I needed to go away from my daily life for 6 weeks and leave obligation behind. 

I considered 3 different geographies:  a farm in north Texas belonging to my in-laws, a bed and breakfast in an apple orchard in western Colorado belonging to an extra-extended family member, and an oceanside house in the Bahamas belonging to a longtime Boulder friend, and eventually made all the arrangements to go stay in the Carribbean for 6 weeks, starting last Sunday, March 12th.  Toward the end of the week, Brad developed a bad cold (thought he might have strep throat, but didn’t) and didn’t want to fly all day on Sunday for fear his head might explode, so we delayed our departure date until today — and I noticed myself feeling relieved about being home the extra couple of days and thinking that I didn’t really want to go — so we didn’t.  Many big thanks to my friend Lindsey for offering her home as my writing place, and then for being her usual Buddhist calm and flexible self about me changing my mind!

I looked at all the great things about living here in Boulder, including my incredible husband, house, dogs, friends, family, landscape, town, bookstore, and my very own writing sanctuary full of books and music and calm and thought that I really need to figure out a way to do my work here, where my life is — so I’m going to do that for the next 6 weeks instead of taking a geographical cure.  I’m going to hibernate and let my obligations fend for themselves and just focus on doing my writing work.  My desk at home is already mostly buried in the daily papers of life, and I’m just going to let things keep piling up around me as I plow ahead toward finishing the first draft of this book.  I’m going away from my daily life, but I’m staying here in Boulder..