The honor of your presence

In the last month, I've been gone a lot, doing lots of things. Some fun, some less so. One thing I have not been able to do much of is work on my novel.

Oh, I wrote my weekly stories for FridayFlash, and wrote blog posts for Write Anything (on the future of publishing) and Amwriting (on line editing). I wrote several little pieces for Landless to keep it from being completely blank while I was away.

And yet...

Things were crazy enough in the run-up to my departure and during all my comings and goings that these things were written more quickly than I'd like, auto-posted without my being here, comments necessarily went unanswered, and I was mostly unable to go read anything written by anyone else. Not good, I know, but I console myself with the thin comfort that being an unresponsive, substandard blogger is better than leaving the blog with nothing but dead air for a month solid.

What I'm trying to say is, I missed you, dear reader.

Furthermore, the immediacy of being around the social media landscape and being present is something I missed. This is not to say I spent the last five weeks off by myself, letting my beard grow out while building pipe bombs in a cave. No, I was quite social and active, engaging with people in the real world. What I'm talking about missing is the engagement with my writer friends on twitter and other places online - the virtual world. Also, of course, there's the engagement with the completely fictitious world(s) I create in my head. I missed that, too.

Don't get me wrong. I like the real world, and the people in it. The real world has all sorts of things to recommend it: friends, challenges, sensations, commitments, purpose. I'm a blessed individual in that my own corner of the real world is a generally happy one, filled with people whom I can care for and who care for me.

I don't want my virtual world(s) instead of my real world, or vice versa. I want them both.

So, here I am, back home again and looking forward to reestablishing the balance in my life. One thing my time away has taught me is that in striking this balance, I have to make more time for the writing on my novel. A thousand other things can creep in push it down the list, simply because it's a long term project. I need to pull it back to the forefront; it deserves a better effort that I've been giving it.

Onward.

===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.