Where there had been darkness, I had hung my words

 My kid says I should write more here

I enjoyed the era of the Internet when blogs were...if not mainstream, then less fringe when they are now. That was my jam! An era where long form essays were posted on non-SEO-optimized (because SEO was not yet a thing) single purpose websites.

It was always fun discovering a new one (maybe through a blogroll!) that shared your passions, exposed you to new ways of thinking about something you loved and diving into the archives.

That would at times give rise to an occasional melancholy when you realized they had their heyday eight years ago, and output trickled down to nothing and they hadn't posted since the last Olympic Games.

And, hey, I'm describing myself here! 

(Obviously not the Olympic games, literally. That was a rhetorical device to denote a long period of time. I had some half-assed posts in April of last year.)

And my circumstances have changed. I'm busier. I write for eight to ten hours a day. I forget it if was Lindskold who said it, Zelazny or Lindskold quoting advice Zelazny had given her, but you never want to do a lot of writing in your day job, because of the simple fact that you're not going to want to do more writing when you get home.

Also, I have a kid who shares my distinctive last name and I don't want to post anything here that would make life more difficult than a teenager's life already is.

And on top of that, I'm an elected official these days(local board of education, which is still an elected position, even if people tend not to think of it this way) and subject to more scrutiny than other people might be.

However...

I like reading what I wrote. Most of it. Typos are always embarrassing, and my views have evolved, as anyone's should. There are things I posted back then that I would not post today.  Or would at least express with more nuance and sensitivity.  But learning from our mistakes is how we grow.

I don't delude myself that my writing here is important. But just the same, I'm happy that people have enjoyed reading what I wrote. I enjoyed writing it. 

It's right there in the name of the blog: "Where there had been darkness, I had hung my worlds. They were my answer. When I finally walked that Valley, they would remain after me."

And longtime readers are familiar with the origin story, that I misread "worlds" as "words", but the sentiment is the same. They both represent the act of creation.  Writing, creating in such a way, is a good thing. Holy, even, in its way.

So, maybe this marks a return, on a smaller scale, to hanging the occasional word in the darkness.