Why haven’t I been posting?
It’s a simple question, without a truly simple answer. I haven’t given up this blog, but a convergence of events, internal and external, have occurred in such a way that I am disinclined to post at present.
The most obvious explanation is that I have become rather busy at work; a crisis that I am tangentially involved in has arisen, and my analytical skills are necessary to understand and solve the problem. Much of the time that I would otherwise be available to surf the Internet and post has been usurped by this project; I can hardly feel ill-used that my employer is putting my abilities to work on something rather important, but I must confess that I feel somewhat put-out, as this project is in crisis due to a certain measure of incompetence in a department and by persons whose incompetence has been acknowledged for quite some time, yet the situation has been allowed to continue until it now requires considerable effort by others to dig them out to daylight. That’s one of the reasons I’m not posting.
Also, I seem to have caught cold from one of the persons with whom I am working with to solve this crisis. No doubt the stress has reduced my immune system, but I can’t help but feel that I would not have caught this cold if it hadn’t been necessary to clean up other people’s messes. The resulting malaise of illness has sapped any strength I might have had to post after hours.
Plus, I am currently not in love with my little lap-top computer, no doubt due to its association with my work. As such, I don’t wish to spend any more time with it then I absolutely have to, though I suppose this is only a temporary cooling, and does not signal a more permanent separation.
In addition, my little department also recently moved into new offices. Our previous offices were somewhat isolated, which afforded me the privacy and solitude necessary to compose posts; in other words, with no-one watching I could manage my time as I wished. Our new offices are up in the front office where everyone can see, and I’m not comfortable enough with my new visibility to continue with my previous habits. This move is related to a new interest that our boss had taken in our department, which has the dubious merit of increasing our value and our work load at the same time.
These, then, are some of the external reasons my posting has been infrequent, though these are, perhaps, not the most important ones.
The Lenten season began with Ash Wednesday on February 10th, and as a Lenten observance I started saying the Rosary on the way in to work, instead of listening to the local talk radio station. Working through five decades of the Rosary puts me into a contemplative and prayerful mood, one quite different from the mood I formally was in by the time I arrived at work. I have found that praying has helped me to deal with some of the more unpleasant aspects of my job currently.
At the same time that this began, I started reading a wonderful novel by Diane Shoemperlen called Our Lady of the Lost and Found an absolutely wonderful book that I recommend to anyone. This book, too, has led me into a contemplative mood. In the book, Shoemperlen writes:
The German philosopher Hegel once described the ritual reading of the daily paper as the secular equivalent of morning prayer.
If this is true, then how much more so would the obsessive reading of Internet news sites and blogs be considered to be prayer by Hegel? Has my morning rosary filled the “prayer space” inside me that once was reserved for my morning blogroll? I don’t know. I can only suppose.
As I said, a combination of events. The planets will unalign themselves soon enough, and I’ll be back to normal; but for now (or, perhaps, for the Lenten season) I’m working and praying and blowing my nose instead blogging.
I just thought some explanation was in order.
Update: Reading this over, I seem to detect a quality akin to "whining" in some of the above, which distresses me. Please believe that I'm not whining about my work; I actually am glad to have a chance to show off to the new boss. But the circumstances could be more pleasant.