On answering a good question

Dale asked, "Why do you guys *do* this to yourselves? Isn't life hard enough already?"

Why, indeed, do we do this to ourselves? In my case, I was trying to use NaBloPoMo as a jumper cable to recharge my batteries which had gone flat sometime this last year.

I had hoped that writing every day would help me recover some of the joy that leached out of blogging during this year. That hasn't happened, this posting-every-day routine remains a burdensome duty which I will hereby lay down. (NaBloPoMo that is, I shall continue to blog at semi-random intervals.)

I was also hoping to recover some of the joy that had leached out of my life during this year. I have been living in monochrome for quite a few months now, maybe most of the year. I can't tell you when the colours went missing, I hadn't noticed until quite recently. I had thought that my malaise was situational: everything will be fine once I get the competition finished, once I get the scripts written, once I get the database sorted out. Well, those things have come to pass and I am not fine, and the world is still mostly grey.

Oddly enough, this comes at a time when I am actually working on the state of my soul, trying to bootstrap myself into calm and happiness. My alternative, now principal, Second Life avatar (whose name is not Susan) joined a meditation and discussion group in SL, and the three of us (SL-Udge, Susan and the blogging Udge who is also the physical Me) have been trying out the practices, with much talking and listening and feeling and thinking. It is having an effect, slowly but certainly. That I have spotted the greyness in me is due to the inward looking-and-listening that we have been doing. It is also in large measure due to the assistance and encouragement of many dear SL friends, even if they might have thought that they were asking me to help them. I am very grateful for your kindness and your company, my dears.

I don't know what happens next. I have work to do and enough spirit to get out of bed each morning, I have friends physical and virtual to stand by. For now, I guess that will have to be enough.

I'm done.