I don't think I'm reluctant about this venue. I've begun drafting, but haven't yet posted, some thoughts about social class and belonging. It got long and fuzzy and I realized that what I had already written wasn't quite what I wanted to say. I think I'll have more to say about that, given where I am spending the next six weeks. And this project of being married is harder than I expected, so there's lots to say about that, although at this particular moment I'm in a schmoopy blissful state, and I'll spare you that.
In my experience writing is a habit, and a muscle, and the more you do it the more you want to do it. Although you have spoken about never wanting to repeat yourself, and I think if you have that rule you will bump up against it. I feel like there isn't that much that I have to say, but that the big important lessons keep sneaking up to me and I learn them and discover them again and again. So I am repeating the essence of what I'm learning, but it feels both new and familiar when I stumble on it again. The world is beautiful, I am lucky to be alive; people are trying to connect but don't know how; being honest is the hardest thing, and also the most rewarding; I feel guilty because I have bad thoughts and I am a bumbler and I think I need to do more and be more than I am motivated to do or be; I am reading something that I don't understand but that is making me think. I expect to say that again and again, here and elsewhere, and if novelty is what people wish for there is the infinite web for that.
I also think that you have important and good ways of phrasing that stuff that some of us hashed out in earnest undergraduate conversations. I squandered some of those earnest undergraduate conversations on debating the merits of Jagermeister versus tequila, so I would appreciate a review. And I don't live in California, so there's a lot of "seasonally appropriate" eating that I haven't figured out. Am I doomed to potatoes and herring from November to May, when I will get to have some spinach, too? You'd best send along some potato recipes, if that's so. Is it worth the $12,000 it will cost for me to convert to a pellet furnace, if I don't know how much longer I will be living in my house? Should I replace my windows first? I can't afford to do both, and I'm not sure doing either one makes economic sense. And if I conclude the investment won't pay off, should I do it anyway because it's the right thing to do and that's what goodhearted folks do? None of us up here can figure out how we're going to make it through next winter. The firewood guys are sold out already. We can't use public transit because the state doesn't have it. I would read your column, and your thoughts on this, because I don't know how we're going to get to where we should be from where we are.