I haven’t written much lately. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, but can’t seem to get much down on (virtual) paper. That’s because my life isn’t always a sitcom.

It seems to me like most people really enjoy reading what I write when I’m writing about the absurd or funny parts of my life, but not so much when I write about the not so funny stuff that happens. So when I don’t or can’t turn what is happening into something absurd or funny, maybe I shouldn’t write at all…? So I thought about that and decided this is my blog and it’s not about me being funny—it’s about me writing all the stuff down that is whirling around in my brain just to get it out of there. If it also happens to be interesting or entertaining reading for you, then yeah!

But it is an interesting concept—that my life could be a sitcom. Because I don’t care how funny you think your life is, or how funny you are personally, nobody really lives a sitcom life. We all have our ups and downs to deal with and our crosses to bear. Some of us have bigger crosses and some of us bear up under them with a lot more grace than others. One of my resolutions in the last year or so is not to whine as much. When I write funny stuff, that is my way of taking what I would like to whine about and turning it into something non-whiny. I mean, what it really boils down to is which soundtrack you are listening to. Am I hearing the laugh track or the dramatic duhn-duhn-duhn every time something happens? Because basically, in life, we all face the choice of whether to laugh at life and move on or get stuck believing it is a drama and just… get stuck.

Still, it has been difficult to write lately for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that it has been winter. Don’t get me wrong—I love winter! Unfortunately, my somewhat slightly malfunctioning brain does not. My brain wants daylight. It would be happy if I lived on the equator. It would be ecstatic if I would move to, say Australia, from October through March every year. When we visit the San Juan Islands in June, it is overjoyed by all of the light, light, light! Every time we go, I think how wonderful it would be to live there until I realize that I wouldn’t even make it through the first October. I would have to sleep in a tanning bed, and then the skin cancer would get me.

But I can only use winter as an excuse for so long. The days have been getting longer for quite some time now and yesterday, I saw my first phlox of the year. Spring has sprung and I still haven’t posted anything to my blog. I seem to have developed a sort of inertia when it comes to writing. It is as if I have been stumbling around attempting to come out of hibernation for a while now and not really succeeding. I can also see that this writing a blog thing has to become a habit. I am in the habit of thinking about things (maybe too much sometimes), but not so much in the habit of writing them down. I guess that is kind of like a sitcom episode—Person resolves to complain less about life sucking by writing a blog about it being a sitcom, only person can’t write about how life sucks because life sucks too much, only life doesn’t really suck that bad—it’s just an excuse to not write the next episode of the sitcom!

I am reminded of those old basic programs where you would get yourself stuck in an infinite loop. I can’t remember the key sequence you used to break out of the loop, but it was something like ctrl-S. So here it is—ctrl-S. I’m officially out of hibernation. I’ve had my virtual cup of coffee. Can you hear the laugh track?