Hello. Yes I still exist in physical form a.k.a. the aliveness-thing is happening. I rarely take several days off posting, let alone several days of not writing poetry—but between moving cross-country to stay with my parents before going to teach English in China (yeah, there ya go, have an anticlimactic announcement), getting used to living not-by-myself again, @steemmonsters releasing battles for the first time, and probably a half-dozen other things competing for my attention and energy, I just didn't post, even though I could have.

The weather has followed suit; it's been raining and cloudy every day in good ol' Allen, TX. My dad @ldp had an emergency eye surgery for a detached retina the other day and is recovering well but has to lay on his left side every 30 minutes to relieve pressure on his right eye. Our refrigerator doesn't currently work because the compressor is broken so it's the novel experience of living out of ice chests (which, by the way, I ain't complaining about. I'm very thankful for everything I've been blessed with in this life.)

I don't really know what the exact point of this blog is, but I rarely just talk like an ordinary human to my friends here, I guess. As much as I love writing poetry, it sometimes seems like a zero-sum game. Outside myself, and the few that derive some sort of fulfillment from reading it, does it really achieve much? Recently, I got a comment from someone who didn't care for my work. They said I was in love with the thesaurus and running out of ideas. Honestly, I thought that comment was hilarious! (and not entirely inaccurate.)

I thought it was so funny because I historically have gotten accused of thesaurus-courting on pieces I write on paper or in dictated form away from the computer where I didn't actually use one to write. But, on the other hand, it could just mean using it at all, or being obsessed with expanding one's vocabulary. Well, that reminds me about an article I meant to write years ago about the purpose of using "big words" or even creating new ones. It has to do with the attrition that terms suffer when they are used over and over and over. More obscure words can come off pretentious, sure, but they're often much more precise from having less distorted connotations.

Regarding running out of ideas, I thought that was double-awesome because it's kind of like saying fire is running out of the ability to burn things. But hey, I know it's just a saying, not to be taken literally. And some people do actually think it's possible to run out of ideas. It's certainly possible to run out certain kinds of ideas that might be called inspired. And when you write some 500+ pieces over the course of a year and a half it's a bit tough to maintain brilliance in each one. Why the hell else do you think I was forced to recently write a poem about ice-cube trays?

Look, this isn't even a rebuttal. I ain't salty, I'm sweet n' sour(or all three at the same time? Hmmm, I didn't mention bitter or umami...) I like getting critical comments. I'd rather someone dislike my work then be completely indifferent to it. I think that's many-a-poet's worst nightmare: spending midnight hours hunched over some discolored leather binder by firelight, seeing oneself grow old through the endeavor, and realizing all of it was just total rubbish in the first place that never really made anyone feel anything, anyway.

You know the four line poem that I put at the beginning of this post? What if that was the entirety of my post today? No images, no explanation? Maybe no title, even, and one tag. It wouldn't earn that much less than any of my other posts. Maybe after a few days of it I'd get removed from @qurator and @msp-creativebot or whatnot. But the blockchain itself is content-indifferent. STEEM having any value requires human beings to make the asymmetric, irrational decisions humans make. We're somewhere between code-is-law and culture-is-law. And in that grey area, lies a paradise, and a void.