Why the blog...

If you are reading this then you love me. Either you are a friend, a family member, or a stalker who has perhaps gotten the link off of facebook or from a crumpled up napkin that I left on a table at a diner that you conveniently happened to be attending at the same time as me. Either way, you love me. And chances are if you know me or love me (excluding the stalker), then you know this one simple fact about me: I am bad at keeping in touch. Horrible, in fact. And it is to the detriment of many of my relationships. I reply to emails months after they are sent (if at all), I cannot remember the last time I put a letter in the mail, and I am unfamiliar and insecure with this new confounded technology you call a "phone." If you have ever received a post card from me, I am sure it has reached you weeks after I have returned from the destination, because I placed it in the mail at the airport. Sometimes I will return with a bag of post cards in my carry on luggage, writing them on the seat back tray table in the plane and handing them to my friends weeks after I have returned (always an awkward and unfulfilling experience).

So thats what this blog is about. These postings are my letters to you - conversations and tidbits of my life that will probably never make it into the mail or into a phone call, but are meant for (addressed to) you. It is a common movie trope, and I imagine it is true in real life, to have an old man or woman, when talking to their young curious grandson/neice/nephew/grandaughter/paper boy to pull out an old dusty shoebox or drawer filled with letters. Letters that for some reason (and tragically they are almost always love letters) were never mailed. The experience, both for us watching the movie, and for those living it, is always one that evokes a sigh - half filled with regret, half with sentimental warmth. That metaphorical shoebox is in my head. I am currently in Cape Town South Africa nearing the end of what is supposed to be one of the greatest adventures in my life so far. Everyday I am reminded of friends and family - by little things - songs, events, people I meet, dog poop I step in, attempted muggings, power outages, week-long rain rainstorms that make the sidewalks into rivers. I have thought of 100 different letters I wanted to send - different titles for each one.

This blog experiment is an attempt to get that shoebox out of my head. Its too full. Plus it is an awkward thing to carry around. People in restaurants and at the grocery store are always like "hey, what's with that box on your head" and I'm like "its just some stuff I need to send...mind your own business and finish your meal, sir." Also I always think the cliched image of the old man or woman pulling that box out and going through its contents is unbearably tragic. So i gotta send these now. They are letters to all of you, and just you. Letters for you (in the general sense) and you (in the singular). Im new at this, so bear with me, (as you always have - with that superhuman patience that makes you sigh in exasperation and shake your head and say "ohhh cj/tey") Know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I am standing right here. And I wanted to let you know that I thought about you today...