This Hiatus Must End

Despite leaving the link to this blog on my Firefox bar, a spot that practically guaranteed I'd pay it copious attention, summer has begun, I've been free from my academic bonds for about six weeks, and here my blog sits rotting away, untouched by human hands since May. This was never my intention, but I suppose I picked an awfully inopportune time to start wanting to write again. It also didn't help that expelling 80-odd pages of academic writing didn't particularly inspire me to write any further.

That having been said, I've decided to try and kick this into high gear again, perhaps in the desperate hope that getting a few words down every so often will make me want to get some more words down on those stories I promised myself I'd begin working on this summer. Sigh.

Despite enjoying everything that's happened while I've been home -- the return of bowling night, my entrance into a piddling bowling league, several trips to various theme parks that are not Six Flags Great Adventure, and, most recently, my brother's engagement -- I haven't exactly been able to relax enough so that home actually feels like home yet. There's been something missing since the day after I returned home from Princeton...and promptly started working full-time hours at the hospital. Home on a Sunday, in work on a Monday does not make for warm, relaxing, inviting respite; just feels a bit too much like more of the same.

There are remedies to this problem on the horizon. Tomorrow, for instance, yields the return of Alicia from the dreadful morass of Washington, D.C. and summer classes. I know everyone's been around, and the crew has been particularly lively this summer, it just hasn't felt the same without everyone there, and everyone has, from the start, included Alicia. It'll be good to have everyone home at last, despite the delayed arrival.

Another solution will manifest itself in two weeks, when I continue my string of random coaster-whoring trips with Princetonian enthusiasts. This time, Charles, Julia, and I will be taking the Mason-Dixon Line by storm, running across it several times in an effort to bring myself to the coveted #150 -- to be taken upon Holiday World's newest wooden beast, The Voyage -- and well beyond. Trip reports on that will follow, naturally.

Of course, with all this traveling and working and hanging out and so forth, I've also been conscious of the need to relax and take a few deep breaths every now and then. To that degree, I've committed myself to a nice stack of books with which I shall dispatch as the months go on. Thus far I've completed three works: Stephen King's On Writing, Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and, just today, Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. What's exciting about my reading this summer is that I'm not only finding myself deeply engaged in these texts, but I'm also seeing shreds of what I know I can create in my own work. I feel like my reading is finally starting to speak to me as a writer, and I'm beginning to believe myself capable of producing really fabulous work if I put my nose to the grindstone and strive to channel my creative energies. The reading also provides a nice balance to my hectic everyday life: while I do tend to become engrossed in my reading and commit large stretches of time thereto, at the very least I'm committing to distraction deprivation as well as an activity that requires of me no physical activity save for page-turning.

Of course, between all that reading and the sleeping I've been doing -- note to self: finish up quickly, the bed's voice is becoming more shrill and urgent by the second -- I've been doing a less-than-stellar job keeping up with my health commitments, but I'm not worried yet. I've put a couple pounds on, and I can definitely tell between my appearance and the fit of my clothes, but with a wedding to prepare for within the next two years, I'm confident I'll have the motivation needed to reach my ultimate goal.

Dave, get the fuck over here now!

Oh well. Best not piss my bed off anymore; heaven knows it's been good to me. I hope this update has satiated your appetite for my mostly pointless waste of webspace, and I promise I'll do better from here on out. But for now, the time has come to bid the audience good night.