Have you ever been stalked by an ex-beau? Someone from so long ago and from a relationship that should have been pleasantly transient but which ended, at least for me, with a sour taste and a sense of embarrassment? The kind of affair you really don't want to revisit much less rekindle?
Well, I have and it ended, I hope, when the jerk started lurking on this blog, leaving the kinds of comments that made me think I had a really insightful reader. So insightful that at one point, I wrote back to ask "Do I know you?" Well, yes, I had and the worst of my suspicions were confirmed. What a double disappointment. There was no one new reading me and this self-centered and dishonest salesman had reappeared...again. in new media. So I quit blogging.
Well, I posted new work and brief announcements, but the comfort and confidence I'd enjoyed blogging here was literally shut down in such a way that I could easily avoid confronting the matter. It was a lot like facing the mistakes and petty abuses of the long ago past: dating someone with a girlfriend; not reporting or slapping an English professor with a roving hand; rolling over and playing dead.
I don't know how this blog will change, but I'm taking it back, at least for the duration. I broke my foot on Christmas Day and will be home-bound for the Winter quarter with myself and my dog and my inability to write.
This time, I will not let the lurker win.
AG
