it requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos

    Nine years. Nine years of blog posts, rants, glories & chagrin, book reviews, triumphs & heartaches. Thanks for reading, for listening, for commenting, and for coming back.
     I wonder if it's the season, the passage of time and the turning of another year, that makes me melancholy, or if it's the blog anniversary and the feelings that accompany it? I know that this thing, this space, the continued existence of this blog, is "mine", but it really does seem to have a life of its own, and all the more the longer it goes. It is a strange thing to look back at those early posts and think about how different I am now. VERY different! Older (obviously). More solitary. Quieter, but also more assured. Darker. More grateful. Healthier (in many ways). I'm still the same person, though--sentimental; quick to anger (and quick to forgive, usually); book-smart; foolish with money (but getting better); shy; observant.
     This would be a good time to have some great insight about all this, to show where nine years of rambling has gotten me. But I suppose that it's not much surprise to discover that I still have more questions than answers, and that I'm not too bothered by that. It's the journey, not the destination--right?

Christmas in the home state, 2012

  [the title quotation is by John L. McClenahan]