Here’s what happens when you find an old blog you started years ago, after intervening years of studying, rather obsessively (wastefully? real-work-avoidingly?), the art of sentence structure, and you think, hey, girl, you already knew how to put sentences together.

Here’s what happens when you recognize, well hey there, only three posts, but they’re not total crap.

No! Here’s what happens when you realize they’re more than “not crap.” That you like what you wrote all those years ago. (To be precise: “years ago” in this case means approximately four, maybe five years. Or three. (Warning, girl: Dates will change if you migrate your site again—even on a teeny mewling baby of a site.)

Well, then, what happens? Set the stage: you’re lying on the couch, it’s Saturday, grotesquely hot outside for June, Covid has wound down—you don’t remember the last time you wore a mask, maybe two weeks ago? (should you worry that events jostle around in your mind, untethered to specific dates? Covid fog? other fog?)–you’re reading something interesting but not enough to keep you completely awake on this hot afternoon, until you feel a gentle rumble, it lasts several seconds. Earthquakes are like a tonic to a sleepy brain, and your attention prickles back to life. Have the neighbors felt it? S. across the street is baking, all sounds and vibrations (same thing, right?) drowned out by her standing mixer and Led Zeppelin on the speakers; R. next door jokes that it was his push-ups that shook the ground; K., who lives catty-corner and suffers from anxiety that sets up its own continuous psychic vibrations, felt nothing but her dog, a nervous little Chihuahua (like dog, like owner) freaked out, so that’s good, the neighbors believe you now that it’s been verified by Mittens. Imagining earthquakes isn’t something you want to be known for. Thought honestly, you feel them far more often than you like to admit.

The excitement passes and leaves clear wakefulness in its wake. The wake that wakes—like an Irish wake! No. Focus. Good. Let’s do something productive. Check tasks off the list. A little IT clean-up (God, how did it come to this? so much screen time! like tending to a needy toddler, one that throws tantrums and has its own language which you’re supposed to understand and gets sick all the damn time). One thing leads to another and here you are, back at the old forgotten blog.

And suddenly the lazy doldrums are gone. The earthquake (it was real, right?) sent out a little frisson of excitement, but this, stumbling on this little underfed baby of a blog, this trumps a mini, barely-there earthquake any day. It’s yourself from three or four or five years ago giving a little wave, hey, girl! nice to see you again, let’s get reacquainted! Better—let’s do some writing of our own! Express our own thoughts and ideas and words. Ghostwriting is great, but have you lost yourself a bit in the process? Have all these other voices drowned out your own? Well, then, welcome back.