Every once in a while, I look at my blog and think, "Wow. I should really write something." But then I don't. The balloon saga was... well... pathetic. I mean, I couldn't even bring myself to backdate the entries far enough to be anywhere near accurate.  OK, I mostly backdated the entries to be fairly accurate, but by the end of it, I pretty much gave up.

I went to Rhode Island about 14 months ago and have been meaning to write about that, maybe post a few pictures for friends and family to look at. I did manage to put some stuff up about going to Yellowknife, but I had such plans for posting more on Edmonton, which I visited during the same trip.

The thing that shocks me is that whenever I bother signing in and looking at the statistics on this blog, they never really drop off significantly. Somebody actually looks faithfully at this thing, I suppose hoping that I'll someday post something else (sort of what I do with all the "Blogs I Like" listed on the right of this.  Either that, or 80-100 random people surf in every day. Either way, I feel bad that I'm disappointing people who might expect to see something here besides months-old pictures or a brief comment on something someone else wrote.

Even this guilt, though, doesn't seem to change my behaviour. I'd like to think it's because I'm busy, but I can't even explain it with that. I do manage to watch at least 3 episodes of the X-Files every week, and even the occasional episode of Jeopardy. (Wow. That sounds waaaay geekier than I am.) I can't claim laziness because I'd probably be watching more TV if it were that.

I have 114 unread messages sitting in one email account, 25 or so unread messages in another, and 19 in Facebook. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the computer age. I mean, the computer age isn't really that old, but it has taken over soooo many facets of our lives. 120 years ago, nobody had electricity and now we can't live without it. 20 years ago, few people had home computers and most work was done with typewriters. Now, if a computer system crashes, workplaces are completely paralysed. If my home computer died, I wouldn't know what to do. Everything is on there - my resume, my business accounts, and most important of all, the Internet, which now holds the knowledge I used to find in encyclopaedias, phone books, atlases... I can't even remember half the resources I considered readily available! 

Thirteen short years ago, there was no email, no information superhighway, no Wikipedia, no blogs, no instant communication gratification. People got mail in their mailboxes outside their houses. Real letters from friends. Phone calls were made. Friends who moved to other cities slowly dropped out of sight unless a real commitment was made to stay in touch. The Internet is marvelous - I can "talk" to my friends as much as I want to, even though we're hundreds of kilometers apart.

What I need is a good month to sit down and write some nice emails to people I miss, especially those whose emails sit marked "unread" in my mailbox. I have read them, I have just marked them unread because I know I want to answer them. Someday.

Then, I'll blog.