#592. Monk in Exile

Well, if you haven't realized by now that I've virtually quit blogging, I don't know what to do with you.

There's a lot of reason why this happened, but truthfully, the most honest one was that my laptop's battery finally crapped out on me.  The battery has been an issue for a while.  It stopped holding a good charge a few years ago.  Recently it wouldn't even reliably hold a charge while actually plugged in.  People less technologically pathetic than me probably would have been able to cope with these developments better.  Me, when the battery started becoming an issue, I actually went to the store where I originally bought the computer.  Maybe it's just that their associates suck (which is always possible), but they more or less told me to go away, and so I did, and came to no conclusion.

Like computers users of my kind in general, I've had constant issues with these devices.  I've owned a desktop since 2000, bought right before I started my sophomore year at the University of Maine in Orono (which was actually my first year there; I was a freshman at Mercyhurst in Erie, PA).  I got the laptop in the late fall of 2007, when I originally moved to Colorado Springs, mostly because the desktop (along with everything else I owned) took weeks to catch up with me.  (Seriously, moving companies?  You suck.  Even my brother is facing a lag time with his stuff as he prepares to relocate from Massachusetts to Louisiana.  Then again, maybe it's just moving companies based in Massachusetts.)

The desktop has had its issues, and we've managed to survive them.  My laptop and me have survived numerous crises as well, and it's my hope that we can overcome this one, too.

In the meantime not so much with the blogging.  I started blogging in 2002, coincidentally while attending UMaine.  College for most people is a time for expanding horizons.  I did plenty of that, and part of that was establishing an online presence.  I did a lot of that at a more-or-less-presently-defunct Star Trek message board that was much-beloved in its heyday.  We were a tight community.  I developed most of what has become my writing craft there, both in fiction and otherwise.

I've been here at Monk with very little readership for most of this time.  The most I ever independently provoked actual comments was with the brilliant but short-lived Ted Danson sitcom Help Me Help You.  I spent a lot of time in the years that followed my blogging debut not actually blogging.

And then in 2010, I started expanding.  You can still see all the expansion efforts.  I started blogging a lot.  And I stumbled into a community.

Now, I've never been one to be social.  I'm like the Green Lantern planet, Mogo.  And it always backfires on me.  Persistence equals success?  In your dreams, Dorothy.

The timing with the latest crisis and my decision to consciously back away was something that just sort of worked out for me.  I'd been stressed about blogging since the end of the A-to-Z Challenge.  I was still having fun, but it was becoming a chore, and as I said, persistence doesn't equal success.  I developed a small and loyal following, which I still appreciate, but ego comes to all of us.  We can't deny it.  I'm no Buddhist.  If you think you can live without it, then chances are you're not too keen on living itself.  And that's no way to live.

But this is to say that I haven't totally given up.  On the right is an updated linky for the book club the Armchair Squid started up.  Next Friday is our second meeting.

Join me.  Or not.