Five

Five years ago on this day I started this blog with this post. Go back and read it if you'd like, relive the memories (not that I imagine there were many people who actually read it the first day it was up), whatever.

Now, five years later, it's a bit different. I'm not 20-something (gasp). I have fewer stories to tell, and I get off less on telling them than I used to because I've run out of the exciting ones and most of the ones that remain are more banal, at least to my mind. I have less time and energy.

I'm not stopping. But I'm reevaluating. And I'm having to slow down a bit because, let's face it, blogs are no substitute for real life.

A lot of very nice people (well, a lot relatively speaking anyway) have said that they don't care, that they want me to continue as I have been, even if I'm not constantly telling exciting stories. They like the blog, and that touches me. Several have gone so far as to say that they wish I would branch out into more fiction, the way some of my fellow bloggers do. Hell, a few have even said they'd read something I wrote even if it weren't erotic at all.

Basically, I love each and every one of you, and I hope you'll bear with me as I try to sort things out a bit. And if things change in a way you don't like, I hope you won't hate me for doing what I have to do. I'm not saying that it's not my blog to do with what I please, but it pleases me to please you in some way. Without you, I wouldn't be blogging, I'd be masturbating. And that's not as interesting.

Flash Fiction Friday is wonderful, and I wish I had the ability to do it every week. Lately, things have conspired to stop me. I could see doing fiction, but it would be a different blog then, and I'm not sure I shouldn't just start a different blog if that's what I'm planning on doing. There are also concerns of paranoia; every day this blog is up is a day that I worry, just a little, that it will hurt someone I love. In hindsight, I'm not sure it was a good idea to start blogging as I did; I should have been more circumspect. And now I'm faced with the choice: do I continue as I have and worry more and more, or do I stop and disappoint people?

I'm thinking about things. That's where I am. I wrote this in advance, just in case I wasn't able to make it online on the actual anniversary, so rest assured that I'm thinking about things.

To keep this from being overly depressing, here's an old snapshot I dug out of the box. I'm not sure when or where it was taken, but it was a happy time. I'm in there somewhere. I'll leave it to you to figure out where; it shouldn't be difficult. Simpler times, simpler pleasures. It's perhaps more graphic than usual, but I'm tired of teasing, I guess.