Here it is, March of 2017. I have allowed to happen that which I vowed I would not: I let a full year lapse between posts at Farrago. It's quite an embarrassing thing for one who calls himself a writer.
Perhaps my life is ultimately uninteresting even to myself. Time spent sharing the mundane turns of my personal pages seems more and more time wasted — mine and, especially, yours.
But I'm a "writer." I'm supposed to write, if for little more reason than to practice, and to publish, in the form of blog posts, for others to see, to critique and, hopefully, to share.
There is passion, and then there is discipline. Passion is the drive to do something because you enjoy it; discipline is what keeps you doing that thing when the passion wears thin. It's not that you don't enjoy doing it anymore, but rather that you've likely found other things to do that you enjoy more. Passion's fickle nature is what reveals to you how little discipline you actually have.
But, lately, I have found my thinker rather devoid of thoughts. In my blogging heyday I used to seize upon a thought and it would fester within me until I had the keyboard at my fingertips, and then it would fly out of me and into the internet! I used to seize upon so many ideas at once that I couldn't hold onto them all, and some would fall away into the dark morass of my brain cave, never to be thought again.
But now? Something broke. That light bulb that would pop on several times a day seems to have burned out. Even in this most remarkable social and political ass zit time of our lives, I don't have a single thought to lend to the discussion.
And so, just feeling lately like I must write, I come to realize my blog has lain dormant for more than a year, but a year with several highlights about which I should have written:
--in May I applied for two different jobs within the State of Illinois
--also in May, near the end of the month, my sister, Pam, age 64, passed away due to complications of congestive heart failure and a DNR; she is the second of my sisters to die, and less than two years after the first
--in August I faced the financial onslaught of the litany of repairs needed on my 2002 Nissan Xterra, and began the hunt for a new(er), more reliable car, a somewhat less daunting financial onslaught
--in mid-September I signed the loan for a 2014 Ford Focus at Carmax; so far I am very pleased — both with the car, and with the experience of buying from Carmax
--in late September, having given up after nearly three months since the applications, I received a call to interview with the State of Illinois for an office coordinator position at Elgin Mental Health Center
--in mid-October, after waiting three weeks to hear from the State of Illinois, I finally received a job offer to the position for which I had interviewed; I accepted, and they set a November 16 start date
And there you have it. Six stand-out pages from the story of my life since last I wrote here. I hope you will come back. I promise the next post won't be another mundane diary entry. I just make no promise when the next post will be. I've left too many of those unfulfilled over the past few years.
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