May

There it is. May. Last post…February. Wow, how about that?

WordPress has grown more svelte. Nice little buttons and do-hickeys on everything. Looks like they’re continuing to expand their features, which is awesome, considering it’s all free.

A lot of things have been going on in and around Josh Salmons. I won’t get in to everything, suffices to say I needed a break from blogging, obviously.

There’s an interesting dynamic when people around you begin to absorb your blog. I fancy book authors experience this on a deeper level, yet more infrequently. Running into a random person and discussing the intricacies of the kitten in chapter four or the choice of detail on the sunset before the protagonist suffered a setback…that sort of thing; verses having a blogger who just has people pipe in daily and drop a few sentences, constituting a “yea” or “nay.”

In Iraq I was spoiled, concerning readership. No one around me cared about the blog, so only those searching for either my name (friends/family) or for keywords surrounding content found it. Here, students, coworkers and an expanding litany of family, church friends of family, and family of friends all send emails, asking about things.

And that’s great, albeit a little stifling. Have to keep things PG. Can’t really talk about anything that would remotely offend anybody who might remotely be on the RSS feed. For a cynical SOB like me, that limits things to a discussion concerning my choice of a lunch venue.

So, as the winter continued, I allowed the blog to fall asleep. Not that I’m trying to shake loose unwanted readers—everyone is welcome. I just needed a break.

Once or twice I caught the itch—even wrote a couple of posts in the interim. The first tickle of desire came at a traffic light, the second one day at work. Though I hashed out some sentences, it never grew into anything more than a few paragraphs of nothing.

I was worried I had lost the fire.

I heard an author on NPR the other week. She was finishing her fourth or fifth novel—romance writer, very popular and unorthodox, considering she’d just decided one day to become an author. The host of the show read some submitted comments and asked for the romance writer’s feedback. One comment was from a person who was a technical writer (someone who fills the pages of all those operator manuals no one ever reads). The commenter was asking how he could break out of his doldrum routine into create writing. The romance author said she thought this guy’s job was perfect, despite the drudgery of it. His job taught him to produce coherent work, despite whatever his disposition or feelings were for that day. Regardless, he had to write.

There was something to that. And something to this blog, despite itself.

So, here we are, those that are left 😉 We’ll keep at it.

Roommate Adrian just purchased his own copy of some Adobe toys, which is inspiring me to dig out my own. Maybe I’ll start incorporating some Photoshop creations on this thing. More artistic expression will probably be what I need to get out of the rut.

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