185. words, words, words

You know, I'm eager to get back to my thoughts on art and culture and Christianity (see blog 184), but I've been realizing lately that for the past month or so, all my entries have been about things that I've been thinking about. I mean, all my blogs used to be about...well, me - how lonely I felt, or how confused I was, or what I wanted, or what I wasn't getting out of life, etc.

And I wrote back in blog 162 about how I've finally found contentment as a single person. And you don't get the sense of it from that blog, but there was a part of me that worried that I was jinxing myself by writing that - that the plates would shift and my mood would come avalanching down and I'd be back to writing pitiful, "I'm so lonely," blogs again.

But it didn't happen.

I'm actually still content.

And I find that mildly surprising. And perhaps it should come as more of a surprise, but well, it's happening to me so...I mean, how do you be surprised at yourself?

Anyway, I just wanted to take a break from all that thinking and wrestling and fretting over matters of faith and orthodoxy and culture and all the rest of it. Tonight, I just want to keep it short and simple.

Me? I'm doing well, overall. I mean, I'm getting by in life. And maybe that should worry me. I mean, maybe I should be worried about being more passionate, about taking a bigger bite out of life. Maybe I should be about reading smarter books or more spiritual books. Maybe I should be worried about being single for the rest of my life. Maybe I should be getting out more, I mean I've pretty much spent this whole week home at night with my books or at this blog. Maybe this is what it is to be 34 and single. Maybe contentment will settle into sloth and apathy. Maybe I'll start bringing stray cats home and raise them as my furry, substitute family.

But I'm not ready to throw in the towel, to buy the farm, to settle into the rut of routine. I have life left in me to live, even if only through these words. For I do love to write. No, I don't fancy kittens enough to start bringing them home with me (and besides, my parents hate cats), but I do love these silly words that I string together.

And I write in part for you, my readers, and I write in part for myself. And I write because I can. And I'll admit that I might not write so much if no one was reading or if blog counters left no trace of an audience. But more than anything else, I write because I'm almost always surprised at what I end up with. I follow the sentences where they lead - word by word like tiny stepping stones, I write them as they come.

Until they bring me to the end.

And I hit the "post" button.

And go to bed.