Drunk on the Funk

When last we left our Introspection Action Figure, he was sucking dust in an upper room; spent of energy, crippled by his own misgivings. Okay, so the doll was just sitting there but he's been giving me stink-eye for the better part of a month now. There I'll be polishing off a paperback, staring out the window or trick-clipping my toenails into a distant shot-glass and I'll catch the little bastard eye-gouging me from across the room. Noooo, he doesn't talk - but with a molded plastic countenance, who has the face muscles needed to speak? No bother - I know what he'd say anyway...

"You there - with the thinning hair and thwarted ambition - weren't you gonna be somebody? You know: the thinking man's photog, unrequested pundit, self-appointed scribe for lenslingers at large ... what up with that?"

So far I haven't answered. It's easy when you don't know what to say. But the questions my hobbled doppelganger wants to ask are the very same ones I've been quizzing myself with lately: "Where is all this drivel leading me? How long should a blog continue? Shouldn't at some point I go back and re-read it?" So far no mystical messages have appeared written in my sausage links, no holographic elders have popped up in my peripheral, no speed limit epiphanies have driven me off the road and into a better frame of mind. So where am I going with all this? Apparently, nowhere.

Once upon a blog, I was on fire with The Word, blasting out dispatches well after midnight, hitting the POST button and stumbling off to bed without so much as halfhearted spell-check. As a result, I have five years of rambling screed, an ever-swollen thesis complete with purple prose, run-on puns and a stash of stolen notions. In many ways, that hasn't changed - but what was once a torrent of forehead fodder has turned into a trickle. This bothers no one more than me - for like it or not I'm one of those flaky writer types who has to bleed all over the screen just to feel normal. Lately though, I've managed to sleep just fine without my litany of opinion emblazoned in pixels the web over and it's the exact kind of slumber that keeps a creative soul like me up at night. I LOVE to write - almost as much as I love to read. In the half decade that I've given it a shot, the rewards - while a bit intangible - have been much more than I deserved or expected. So before I go much further, lemme thank you. If you're reading this entry, chances are you've been here before. I appreciate it more than you know - especially considering the fact that...

I'm not stopping this blog any time soon. I can't. Every time I'm tempted to chop down this repository of thought, I lose all strength in my index finger and my temples tingle with story ideas I never got around to tackling. There's still time, I guess. See, unlike the news beast I feed everyday, a blog comes with no set deadlines. I can (and will) add to it when I'm inspired and I'm willing to fake it the rest of the time. No. Problem. Just know that I haven't forgotten my mission statement: to spotlight the plight of the TV stevedore. It's a task I'm oddly qualified for and until my eyeballs run down my face I'm going to continue adding to this web address. But don't be alarmed if my output wanes once in a while. It'll come surging back when I can least contain it and if history is any indication, I'll gladly get it all over ya. Meanwhile, let your eyes glaze over this mea culpa, for I was reluctant to write it in the first place. I'd love to be implacable, but twitchy word-nerds like me can rarely pull that off. No, I share this lack of progress report with you with the sole hope that it somehow gets me back on track - which is the last place I spotted my quickly diminishing train of thought.

So don't cry for me, Lower Archdale. I'm fine. And if you promise to click back here and there, I'll keep adding my blather. In the meantime, a 'slinger's got to find a way to cope - which is the only reason I bothered you at all. Just be glad I'm not fixating on my action figures, or posting fresh pictures of them on the web...

...'cause that would be weird.