Getting It While Its Hot

It’s fading, all of it, and there’s nothing I can do.

Like the pale rose of a washed-out Pizza Hut roof or the sickly umber of a once-vibrant bumper sticker, summer is, simply, disappearing.

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it is being consumed: used up, sucked to the marrow (which I assume to be a reference to a meat eater devouring the offerings of a particularly good BBQ; feel free to educate me on this point). Regardless of whether the season is vanishing of its own volition, or being finished off till its finger-lickin’-good (another meat reference), its nearly over, and I haven’t even had time to process all that’s happened.

For me, “processing” experiences typically means writing about them: detailing the facts (because they fade right along with time), considering meaning in terms of what growth, understanding, or opportunities may have stemmed from events, which I find best accomplished within the structure of a good yarn.

Which may sound like a round-about way to acknowledge/admit/apologize that I failed to keep up with “processing” here on a regular basis, but I’m not going to do that.  It’s silly.  And it’s bad writing, too, calling to mind every diary entry my juvenile self ever penned, all of which invariably began with a heartfelt apology to the journal gods for “not keeping up.”  The apology format has also become a cliché opening for innumerable blog posts circulating the internets.  If you’re skeptical, just click the little “next blog” hyperlink at the very top of your screen and try a bit of “blog roulette,’ as I am wont to do when I’m inspired to scout the nets for new talent to follow.  Go ahead—give it a few clicks—I’ll wait.

If I were a betting woman, which I’m generally not, I’d be willing to wager that you came across at least one post that began with an apology of some variant, and what I’m putting out on the table right now is the question: why all the remorse? What is this compelling need we have to issue statements of regret to our forums when we haven’t been able to “keep up’?  Why is everyone so sorry?

Speaking for myself, sure, I like to keep things current here. But these days?  This is for me.  I am thrilled, of course, when good folks like yourself come along for the ride, but I’ve pretty much given up on the notion that I’ll be a famous blogger.  And while I’m a bit miffed that I wasn’t able to get events out in print while they were in their freshest form, I really don’t have anything for which to apologize. Summer’s days are numbered—they always have been, of course, but we’re pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel in digits here, and it seems a shame to waste any time regretting all the adventures that have kept me away from my more introspective pursuits.

Still, I’m a writer, and I need my words.  They’ll come, in their own time, probably in a marathon burst the first day things simmer down around here, but until then?  I’m just going to unapologetically savor summer’s swan song.