The Living Years (or, Surely I Can't Fail at This Assignment, Too)

Happiness writes white.
 - Harvey Danger

There's much more to life than what you see, my friend of misery.
 - Metallica

This blog has been a strange animal.

When I was depressed, there seemed no limit to the topics I'd find for discussion, and no limit to the lengths at which I'd discuss them. In 2007, I posted 237 times, devoting thousands of words to barely-informed political diatribes and ill-temepered, bitter rants against the world at large. One would think this all-consuming depression was the fuel for the fire -- and one would have evidence to support this assumption. After all, the last two years (easily the two best years of my life) have seen little to no blog output whatsoever.

But the six months prior to me suddenly becoming the Happy Evil Genius were an unending parade of awfulness, and that saw even less output. I posted rarely, and when I did post, it would often consist of little more than a YouTube video and a few pithy sentences. So: too depressed means no writing. But no depressed also means no writing.

To be fair, though, I was writing again, and pretty consistently, last year, right up until October. That's when we moved, and we had no internet for a week or so. And my habit of posting -- because that's what it had become, a habit -- was interrupted.

I never got the knack again.

But in the next couple of months, things are changing quite a bit. Our son, Jacob, will be born. (He's due in October, but we get the feeling he's likely to show up whenever he damn well pleases.) This afternoon, I was installing the baby seat in my car, feeling a collision of feelings and memories and emotions, and I thought, I want to write about this.

Trouble is: I'm out of practice.

The parts of my brain that let get the words out is very much like a muscle, and it's out of shape. You can't run a mile without doing some stretches, and you can't run the Boston Marathon without running a whole lot of miles.

So here's the plan: look at this here 30 Day television meme. Each day for thirty days, you answer a prompt. 30 days, 30 posts.

Consider that my training regiment. A month from now, I'll be back in shape and ready to write about important things.

Like this new Arcade Fire record. It's great!

Or, you know, our new son. Whatevs.