"If you love me, where have you been?"

You say you love me, love me again,

But if you love me,

Where have you been?

--Reel Big Fish

Dear readers,

I do so love you still. I have been absent from here for far too long, and I hope to remedy that today. I have written a few things which were submitted for publication, but will not be considered if they’re available elsewhere. That’s why I haven’t shared here. Once I know, if it will not be published, I will post it.

I have had so many crazy things happening in my life outside of writing, and the writing has certainly been affected. I have reached that point of being far beyond exhaustion, but not quite dead yet. I don’t think there’s a word for this—at least, I’m not aware of one. I was ill for about a week, which, as Murphy’s Law would have it, coincided with the first week of school. We’ve had insane schedules, car repairs, classes at the college making and not making, people going to the doctor, and about eight million other things. The whirlwind not only never stops, it never slows down, either.

One day, I will sit with nothing due and nothing to do, and I will keel over dead of a heart attack from the shock.

Not that I’d know what to do with myself if I did have a minute to breathe. I know, I know, you would think I should write. But here’s the deal: I write better when I can’t write. When I don’t have time, when I am pressed and pressured, when I am running on fumes or less—those are the times I have the most inspiration and write the most phenomenal pieces of poetry or prose I have ever written. The problem is that this process lives in my head, and rarely makes it to the page.

Regardless, I must continue. And I must away. I really should be working right now.... (shhh! Don’t tell my boss....)

================================================================================

On an unrelated note, I can't, for some reason, format this text. No italics, no centering, nothing. I even tried embedding HTML coding tags, but that didn't work. But, I'm using a third party, so I guess I have to deal with what they have. Just know, dearest reader, that this is not up to my desired standards of presentation. I'm working on figuring out why and how to fix it.