Thursday, October 31, 2013

Yes, Thank You... I'm Still Around!


If your month has been as good as mine has, you've been extremely fortunate. I'll hold that hope for you all. Even with losing a couple of favored people from our spinning blue marble I've had a wonderful October.  As I'd mentioned a while back: I have a life that reaches far beyond blogging, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

That said, it's probably only fair to at least check in and make some mention of what I've been up to since that last post on the first of the month.  I've even been a bit slow to answer email and messages asking me "what's up?", and I apologize... I do appreciate you asking.

My most consistently abusive reader prematurely celebrated the demise of this blog, and perhaps one day he'll get his wish. For now I'm enjoying the hundreds of visits a day from people who have discovered what I hope will continue to be a growing cornucopia of information based on my own experiences and not merely borrowed and reworded from elsewhere on the web.

Normally I'm a relatively private person, but let me share a little bit of what my life's like:

I have five books in various stages of production, a couple of family members who need regular care, five men who I meet with weekly as a mentor for about 90 minutes or so (in addition to daily phone contact), keeping in touch by phone, email and messaging with people I care about on different points on Earth, an exercise regimen of sorts, my own personal time for meditation, contemplation and enrichment, a house to keep and the time I spend reading and watching TV. Oh, right... and there's also eating, sleeping and the other minutiae of life.

I'm also asked to speak every so often on travel in Thailand, and that often requires some prep time beforehand - i.e. going through 45,000+ photos taken in Thailand but not well categorized - to assemble relevant photos and prepare speaking notes. Sure, I could just borrow pictures and present them as my own, but that's dishonest.

So, you see, I'm just plain old busy. Too busy for a retired person, that's for damn sure. While this was a nearly all-consuming addiction for me when I began it some 45 months ago, it's not now. I enjoy it, but it's become more of a guilty pleasure to "steal" some time and share with you all.  I'm not throwing in the towel, but - obviously - I'm not posting like I used to.  It's my hope that after this upcoming presentation I'll be able to get back to the list of posts in progress and be here more often.

In the meantime, don't give up on me. I DO answer emails, and consider those of you who've stuck with me as peripheral friends. I'm here if I can help.

So... why today to catch up? First, I'd like to be able to say I've at least posted a couple of times a month lately, and second, today is one of my favorite holidays... All Hallow's Eve. Second only to Christmas, in my book.

Hallowe'en (invariably misspelled in the U.S.A. today as Halloween), is something we've already covered - acknowledging some of how this odd holiday is observed in Thailand [Halloween: Drag Out The Feather Boas] and I've shared some about how I observe it here stateside [Ghosts, Ghouls And Goblins: It's Halloween]. It's a delightful holiday, so I thought I'd add a few postcards from a family scrapbook that commemorate the day.

These were all from around 1910, when they only required a penny stamp to mail.


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