If you’re the kind of person who reads datelines, you might have done a double-take just now as you realized that this entry is one year (less one day) later than the immediately previous entry. Yeah, it’s true. It’s not a computer error, but my error. Shabby Ramblings has been quiet for nearly one whole trip around the Sun.

Why? Did nothing happen during the last year? On the contrary, many things happened, things that could have been categorized as Book Reviews, Exciting New Stuff, Mild Musings, Spooksville, or The Stump—those being some of the very categories provided by this blog for things that I want to say. It was quite a busy and full year, maybe too full.

I know the reason why I haven’t posted. It’s just hard to admit. You might have noticed that I was chronicling last summer’s vacation in this blog, and I had almost finished. I wanted to be finished with that chronicle before I moved on to other topics. The first time I thought of something to blog, I thought, “I’ll finish up the vacation and then post that,” and that was just enough of an obstacle to put me off writing that night.

And so it went with the next night. And the next week. And the next month…and the longer I waited, the weightier the obstacle of the unfinished vacation became. And that—and not really much else—clogged the blog.

Weird, right? Why couldn’t I just post new articles and come back and finish later? Why did I bother using something so intentionally transitory as a blog to journal something that I wanted to finish with more care? Why did that matter?

I wish I knew. Problem is that it’s not limited to this blog. I have the same problem with email. It’s really hard for me to write “Thanks for the message. Will write more later,” and press send. Instead, I file it in a folder for correspondence, waiting for a good half hour to craft the kind of reply I want to make. But I’m trying to change that, because I have developed a reputation at work and at home for having grotesque delays (like 2–4 weeks) in a medium where people expect responses in an hour.

What I’m trying to reform in my email I shall try to also reform in this blog. What to do? I know: I’ll make a category called I’m Still Here, as a response to all those people who wonder.