Confessions

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I’m not going to pretend. It’s neglect, guilty as charged. If my blog was a baby, Child Protection would have me up on charges: “you didn’t change the poor thing for months.” And it’s true. Months have passed in which I moved apartment, to a whole new part of LA, did a bunch of readings, worked in Vegas, San Francisco and New York and met celebrities and all sorts—months in which there was plenty to blog about, if I wanted.

And yet, here I am, slouching through the door, the deadbeat dad, a guilty shrugger who can’t even look his own home page in the eye anymore. I’m not proud. Scrape away the smirk and it’s all shame underneath, I promise you. I just couldn’t face that relic of a post about the grocery stores anymore. It was a rebuke, a nagging shrew on the landing. What time do you call this? Where have you been anyway?

I won’t bore you with excuses, though there are plenty whirling about right now, like shreds of paper at a landfill. All I can think about is the encouragement and advice I received when this blog was about to launch. Those kind souls who said, “that’s great Sanj”, “it’s your shop-window” and “it’s so important for journalists to get out there…” There’s a summoning of hopes that takes place around the dying embers of December, a way of rinsing out the regrets of the year just gone, and convincing ourselves once more that new years are in fact new beginnings. That’s where this blog was born, in late 2010, out of a seasonal surge of big hearted, sunny-smiled si se puede.

I’m told that at this point in life, I mustn’t chastise myself for such lapses. It’s better to, if not embrace them, then at least forgive. Because this is shared dirt. None of us sinners stand alone. We begin things with exuberance only to falter and fill with doubts:  “What is this blog even about? What’s the point of it? Who cares?” And as the voices clamor, the confidence crumbles and the serpents of self-loathing start to slither.

I don’t pretend to understand these things. I’m just sharing. But what I do know is that sharing is easier now that I have confessed. I feel that I can tell you all kinds of secrets now. And perhaps I will. I also know that this blog is not a shop window, really. Shop windows have displays. They’re tainted by marketing. They long only to be admired. This blog is different. It’s not a representation, it’s the thing itself. If you can’t see a man’s innards, then what’s the point?

I have a treadmill in the garage, I call it my ongoing dust-gathering experiment. But tomorrow, I’m going to get on that thing, you watch. It’s late December and, just like last year, I can feel the animal currents, the primitive emotions, pull me again towards that hopeful horizon where change is possible and I am the architect. So what if it wanes? We all buckle over eventually. For now, I’m surfing this wave right through the champagne crest of the 31^st and into next year, 2012—the Mayan Year Of The Blog.

More soon