I need this

Has anyone else noticed that nobody seems terribly interested in keeping up with the blogging community this summer?  I include myself in the collective "nobody".  It is really hard to be an engaged blogger, a contributor to this community this summer, through writing a blog post, google chats, email threads, and genuine commenting.  It feels hard.  It feels more time consuming than normal.  It isn't as enjoyable as it normally would be.

I don't remember feeling this way last summer.  I remember being full to bursting with things to say, though when I look through my old posts, I don't necessarily see the proof of that in my writing.  I see it in the fullness of my email inbox this time last year, in how many emails were comments on things I had written, and how many were responses to comments that I had left.  So many little conversations that inspired some of my favorite blog posts.  And maybe that's part of the lack of blog inspiration I've been feeling lately:  I'm disengaged from the people who teased those sparks of creativity out of my brain.  I haven't been talking about how I think it's funny that male birds are flashy and female birds are drab.  I'm not planning on infiltrating any polygamist strongholds with anybody.  I'm not doing my best to support and uphold the people I hold dear, and my commenting skills have been really lacking lately.

For these things, I humbly apologize.  I want to be the engaged, enthusiastic, friendly blogger that I once was.  I want to feel like we are making real connections and drawing near to each other as a community.  And I promise, I am going to put more effort into making this a reality again.  The truth is, I need all of you, and I need this space.  I go through a lot of life feeling isolated, alone, misunderstood.  Without this community, I have a hard time feeling normal.  That in and of itself might make me strange... I mean, who can't make friends in the real world???  Apparently, me.  Well, at least not the kind of friendships where I feel like I can talk about all of the stuff I'm into and interested in, without feeling like people are looking at me as though I have another set of eyeballs growing out of my forehead.

So please, please accept my apologies, and forgive me my awkwardness as I try to pull myself back together in the blogging realm.  It's probably gonna be ugly for a bit, but I really hope that at the end of this leg of the journey, I can feel like I have reconnected with you again.