Offline

Well, bloggers, I'm gonna be offline till next Sunday. It's been a strange day for me; I have battled with why it is I have felt such terror at the thought of not reading or blogging until then. But I've girded my loins somewhat after struggling with it for most of the day, and I think this fast is gonna be a good one to do. My own little Advent participation in the week of joy.

This past year has been a strange and difficult one for me. Lots of grieving time, lots of licking wounds and coming to terms with my marriage being over and being the main cause for its demise, and trying to get back on my feet after being sick for over six years. In many respects, the past decade has pared my life down to the barest of its bones. It's not something I would have asked for but it's been a good, good thing - or at least the fruit of it has been good. God has done stuff. I can see further. I can see him clearer. This paring happens to everybody at some point; I figure the earlier it begins happening the better. May as well start getting onto the business of dying so we can get to the good stuff of living.

The paring is also a terrifying, terrifying thing. You can't be prepared for it. You must needs cry and lament your way through it and hopefully find some sympathetic ears on the way. When you go back to picking up your life after the dust settles, it's scary, unnerving, exciting. Nothing is the same and neither are you. You realise that the paring has left its mark. For me it's realising that I've greatly lost the ability to be playful, to have fun. Perhaps that is going to change.

Being online has been good thing for me, especially while I was sick and so limited. There is so much life to be had on here. I love blogging, but I hide behind it sometimes simply because it's easier to get home from work and sit here for hours and be bored than it is to step out and do stuff and get back into living again. It's so easy to take a good thing and turn it into some kind of compulsion when its something we can hide behind.

And so now I've come to terms a bit with the fact that I'm not going to be on here and I'm not gonna be reading till Sunday. It's amazing what we can do when we set our minds to it. These times of extreme discomfort are always extremely discomfiting - but the stuff they yield is pretty fine. I feel shyly anticipatory about what might happen to me over this next week, even though I'm scared that I am gonna get bored, that I'm not gonna know what to do with myself, that I'm gonna sit there twiddling my thumbs knee deep in existential angst, feeling like an empty shell (apologies to those of you with children who are going to be having the complete opposite of times next week and who see my upcoming week as some kind of oasis :)

But maybe I'm not gonna go all nihilistic. God tends to come to the party when we make moves to put our party dresses on. It's our lack of vision that thinks he won't turn up. He probably can't help not to :)

And I have rewritten one of the rules, in the Spirit of Lucy and freedom. I get to spend 15 minutes online every day. Just 15 minutes. That's all. The point of this whole exercise is to stop swimming in the words of others and of distractions so the well can be filled. I don't think 15 minutes a day is gonna be enough to ruin that process. And it will keep me sane. Because I am, after all, an addict :)

Hugs to you, bloggers.