Where the fuck have I been?

Off the grid, mostly. Not in the mountains or the desert or some Hemingway dive bar, but in the hollow echo chamber of my own silence. This site has always had the same arc—fiery bursts of productivity followed by long, desolate blackouts. And 2024 ended by taking a steel-toed boot to my ribs.

Christmas Day, 2024. The pups and I hit breakfast with friends. It should have been warm, merry, unremarkable. Instead, Abby was trembling, withdrawn, masking whatever storm was ripping through her little body. That was the first crack in the ice, the opening of the final inning. She rallied, but I knew. We all knew. And then Zoe, goddamn Zoe—her sudden and catastrophic departure flattened me. One minute she was here, vibrant, the heartbeat of the room, and then she was gone, leaving me in free fall. Two losses in such rapid succession didn’t just bruise me; they rewired my nervous system. I’ve been staggering through the fallout ever since.

Work? The magazines have slowed to a whisper. Assignments arrive sporadically, the occasional album review like a ghost light on an abandoned stage. And this site? Another casualty of inertia. I used to hammer away nightly, cranking out blogs on whatever bled into my orbit—sports, history, riffs, politics, meditation, cinema. Then, without warning, the tap went dry. Or maybe I stopped turning the handle. Writing requires showing up even when the tank is empty, and the thought alone makes me want to puke. The endless meta-lament about not writing is its own hell loop, a tired self-flagellation I’ve dragged around for years.

But lately—this past week—there’s been a flicker. Sparks on the horizon. Ideas bubbling, some wild pulse of creative electricity trying to claw its way back into my bloodstream. And maybe that’s the whole fucking point. Not to chase tidy resolutions or some manufactured epiphany, but to sit down and wrestle the silence into words.

So here we are. No thesis, no promise, no grand finale. Just me, hammering this out in real time. Just fucking writing.