My thanks to Lauren of “Him, Them and Me” for a timely pointer to an article with real relevance to me at the moment: Jim Moore’s piece “A Theoretical Note on Why Blogs Matter: The Strength of Weak Ties”.

It’s obvious that I’ve been silent here lately for quite a while (close to two months now!) and I’ve appreciated the notes of concern and queries about when I will return. The truth is, my desire to post here– like my enthusiasm for technology in general– is cyclical. The latest downturn has been the most severe yet. Over the last few months I have, to the extent possible given the nature of my job, just about stopped using computers and the internet altogether. When I feel able to write, I use pen and paper. When I want to communicate, I send a letter. When I want to read, I find a book. Research takes me to the library rather than the keyboard.

I get physically weary just thinking about weblogs and email and websites and search engines. Even posting this short note is somehow draining me of some small store of vital energy. It’s hard to figure.

Or maybe not so hard. Perhaps my initial enthusiasm for the Internet, the web, and what they could do for art and communication and construction of self has led to a simple case of burnout. It’s happened to far better people than myself.

The more troubling issue is that I similarly seem to have lost my “taste” for just about everything that used to occupy my mind night and day before now. I’d suspect the malaise that comes with a deep depression except that I generally feel pretty good about things. I just have no ambition, no enthusiasm, no excitement about poetry, music, reading, writing.

This all started not long after my birthday late last year, so perhaps there is a connection. I think I’ve simply grown tired of being a Jack-of-All-Trades kind of person. I want to discover (or rediscover) a passion that can drive me with a single-minded desire to know and do more. Maybe this is what everyone wants. Or maybe I have a flawed psyche, finding a way to envy the obsessive collector striving to complete his collection with that one last record or book or fountain pen, discovering I am jealous of the lonely author who has so much to say and only one lifetime to say it.

I can’t make myself have a new sense of purpose any more than I could just tell myself to have a new religious conviction or wake up one day and decide I am going to like the taste of tamarind hard candy.

I need to figure out what has changed. Who this pale impostor is
pecking away at my keyboard. If there is solace to be found in writing a poem or reading a book; if there is some succor available in delving into my jazz collection or spinning Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot; if there are any nutrients left in the dried out carcass of my old aspirations and sense of purpose, I hope that my clawing, scrabbling hands discover it before I wholly waste away.