Some Friends of the Blog have noticed I've taken a little hiatus. 

I wouldn't say I've been writer's-blocked.  Although it has taken me about three hours to write what I've written here so far.  It's true: sometimes writing, in the words of the brilliantly sardonic David Rakoff, "is like pulling teeth.  From my dick."

But I can write.  Slowly but surely the words do come.  I will, however, admit to being both very busy (one of my least favorite words in the English language) and stupefyingly bored with some of my staple themes, and more interested in others that aren't so easy to write about, and which I don't have time to write about because I am, well, too busy.

Yeah, I know.  Wah wah wah.

But this has been a year of major changes in my life.  I took on some big projects that have cut into my Mike time.  I am still adjusting to this whole work-life balance thing.  And it's taking me longer precisely because I'm off-balance in the first place. 

We all have our ways of working things out.  Writing is mine.  It's like cooking for a chef.  You take the raw ingredients of life and you make something palatable out of them.  And for me, the ingredients have to be fresh.  If you don't get cooking, they go bad and you end up tossing them. 

There's no meaning in the unexamined life.  True, there's likely no meaning in the examined life either, ultimately (there's another loathsome word), but it's so much more delicious.

I just don't have time for the elaborate five-course meals at the moment. 

Not only that, but blogging has gotten harder over the years, as the list of things I can't write about here has grown.  One is work, which provides me with enough fodder, God knows, but writing about which could make for a "hostile work environment" or get me fired. 

The Garden Society is another.  Although the antics and follies involved in a season in the Victory Gardens remind me of something out of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books, a certain delicacy is required of me as the current chief steward of the Society.  (Don't worry, I'm working on the book as we speak.)

And a really big one is, well, boys.  Ever since live-blogging a doomed relationship a few years back, it has been my policy not to blog about the ones who could be keepers.  There might be a little name-check every now and again, but no full-on blog posts about my paramours. 

So what's left at the end of the day? 

In a culture dominated by a Fox News mentality politics has gotten so inane I think the joke's really on anyone who takes it all seriously.  But even joking about it isn't funny anymore.  Fox News is like the loud-mouth at the City Council Meetings that eventually drives all the earnestly interested citizens away altogether.

It's not like very serious things aren't at stake.  But being forced to kill billions of brain cells debating a Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry White House run takes us further down the rabbit hole. (I will admit that this still cracks me up every time, though.)

So, hmm.  What else? 

Of course there's plenty else to life.  It just takes time to find it.