A Hiatus Is Strange

I'm on hiatus. I hope that's no secret.

Sometimes it's happy, sometimes it's sad. I never really know what to make of it. I've been thinking maybe I should've never gone on hiatus, because for quite a lot of it that's been all I can think of. Guarding my hiatus, keeping it real, making the most of it, trying to commemorate it in tangible ways so that someday I'll be able to look back on it more vividly.

You can tell it's really turned my world upside down. Before, I was just a normal workaday kind of guy. I came up with projects, or projects were given to me. I worked with the responsibilities that fall to the lives of most people. I tended the hours of the day, scheduling and accomplishing things. I tried to fit in some leisure time and treasured it.

I got involved in this blog, which took off in ways I didn't imagine. It attracted a lot of readers there for a while, with quite a few of them being very hungry for every scrap or morsel of wisdom and truth I was able to serve up. At first that was gratifying; I thought they were half kidding, to be honest with you, but I didn't let on; if it all turned out to be a joke, I thought, the joke would ultimately be on them. And if I had to I could show you from my private diaries where I noted some of my skepticism about the readers' sincerity.

Now looking back, it's apparent they weren't joking, because the interest in the blog became an interest in me personally, leading to me launching the private newsletter that was very popular, and then we had some real life visits, including highlights like tours of the half acre and house, meetings at the bedside of Grandma, going through the family photo albums, viewing my baptism certificate and my first clippings of hair as a baby, and on and on. The visits started off normal enough, but then they were camping on the half acre, seeking personal favors, and, in one rather unfortunate incident, with Garrett Al, the personal favors went more toward the favors of the flesh, if you know what I mean. Guns and knives were involved and finally the police subdued and took him away.

I don't know what exactly the breaking point was. But in there somewhere, in the stress of keeping it all going, I decided I'd finally had enough, and I called for this present hiatus.

But a hiatus is a very strange thing. It's almost like another of these artificial friends seeking personal favors! I hate to say it, but it's true. It's always there with its little hand out. It's staring at me like What are you going to do for me next? On the worst days, a hiatus is like school probation, study hall, or expulsion. It's like a ball and chain. It's like the difference between wrestling and rasslin'. You signed up for a pleasant minuet with a nun and you got kicked in the crotch by Big Bad Mama from the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling (sic).

It's always strange when you have something you think you really love, then it turns out to have a hidden side, a terrible, devouring side. Like five minutes of pleasure, then a lifetime with an STD.