Trying to find a good book to read is annoying me. And, for reasons unknown to me, that annoyance makes me want to write. I can't figure it out. I'm not going to try. But I am writing. Something.

Encapsulating the months that have passed since last I wrote is the impossibility that has impeded me. There is no way. I've considered sneaking up on an account of it from several different directions - maybe a general metaphoric discussion of the over-riding emotional landscape, for instance. Bullshit and who cares. Maybe some short illuminating scenes that might suggest the general story - No. No one thing, or two things or three is the nub of it. It can neither be distilled nor generalized, and too many people I love are prominent characters in the story arc and I have no right to share their parts, and I won't.

And I haven't been unhappy, or sad in a daily way - I've had some great times - a lot of them - but I've been overwhelmed. There's just been too much. There's been too much and it's come too fast and much of it is part of a new paradigm that I haven't had the time or energy to get on top of. I badly want (and need) an attitude that covers this new reality, but all my efforts to engineer one have so far failed. Which is, well, a failure ... and I'm not fond of those.

So rather than chronicle that inability to make peace with the difficult parts of what I just now realize has been the first four years of "my sixties", I've clammed up. And although I tell myself it's the recent subscribers to ramcguire.com - people requesting an alert in the unlikely event that something new happens here - that have embarrassed me into stepping up, the truth is I miss it.

So in the spirit of my original blog, I'll try once again to overcome the inertia of myself while imagining the three or four of you as forgiving and open-minded friends who don't give a shit what I write but are still encouraging me to do so.