Which, somewhat frighteningly, scans (in the poetic sense) just like “the 5th of November.” No gunpowder, treason, or plot here today, though.

Well, maybe.

But it’s been 45 days since I’ve written here at all. That’s a whole password change on my computer at work. That’s six weeks that some of you have appear to have been patiently checking back, if not as often, still sometimes.

I could, I think, legitimately claim “busy” as my reason for not writing: Teaching six classes, doing various administrative things, having (as one of them put it to me this morning) “actual friends” close-by again.

No excuses, though.

But today is the first day of the last month of 2009, and I got to thinking overnight. I was thinking about the blogging and lack there of, for various reasons, and I was thinking about a quotation from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; the character Howard Roark says, “My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.” And I really started thinking about that.

That’s why, I think, that for two years I frantically blogged. And I do mean frantically: I averaged more than one post per day for over two years. Some of the things I wrote were somewhat deep, some were mostly drivel, and some were mostly uninteresting as I talked about books I was reading, movies I was watching, women I was (mostly not) dating. I get that.

But, though a number of people read here almost as religiously as I wrote, and though I knew who some of those people were/are, I mostly did this for me. So when people, readers, told me that they only skimmed the stuff about books and movies, I said, “fine” — it was no problem for me — and kept right on writing those things.

So why did I stop, or pause, or take a break, or go on hiatus though continually promising that I was not doing, and would not do, those things?

Because I got to a point where I was honestly and actually living my life according to the principle by which I had blogged for the previous two years. I had found the place — and it’s not about the new position, about the administrative aspect of that position, about being “in charge” of anything (and those who have done any academic administration know that there is precious little “in charge” to go around) — the place in which it is possible to do my work my way.

I’d been slowly coming to terms with that through my first year here. Part of that coming to terms had to do with the fact that I was forced to rethink some things that my education had pounded into me. Part of it had to do with the fact that it was just uneffinbelievable. I had come to believe, on some core level, that the place in which I could be me and do my work did not exist. That I might be better picking up the hammer and going back to swinging it for a living.

But I found the place. And once I started to believe that, I didn’t quite so much need this space in order to maintain my sanity. I do, though, miss this space, and it’s due for more than just this visit. It’s due for a refit; it’s due for an update. It might even be due for new technology.

But it’s probably due for a more stable, not to say staid, approach. The bottom line is, I can’t have this — in whatever form it ends up — be an all-or-nothing proposition. More measured. Less frenetic.

Because it’s still a space in which I can do my work, my way, and if anyone else is interested in going along for the ride, I’m happy to have them.