FOLLOW ME INTO NORMALCY

The inception of claudtalks coincided with the beginning of a relationship with a biker. No details were off limits, dicey content drove my viewership over the top. Sex in the bushes on the side of the highway, S&M costumes, dicey evenings tweaked by mental illness, and much, much more. After I awoke from the cloud of excitement and compromised sanity that was my relationship, I was left holding an empty pen.

Is a story worth reading without sex, drugs, and dirty words? The content waxed and waned. I went from writing entries almost every day, to once a week, then twice a month, until I got to – whenever.

My views quickly went from triple digits, to 15, to 9, and sometimes 3. People searching the word “sex” in blog search windows would no longer find me. Could I write a piece about riding an Italian scooter and somehow work in the word “anus”?

I spend mornings looking out my window at the stunning view of the Verrazano Bridge, and contemplate new story ideas. I jot down a myriad of ideas over coffee - some of them sordid, some sweet, none of them making it on to the blog. The truth is, the validation wasn’t there. If a blog falls in the forest and no one is around to read it, does it even exist?

“No one cares,” I told my man friend when he inquired about my lack of writing. Even he had stopped reading after being traumatized by my indiscreet details about relationships with other men. Other readers had drifted away in the blogosphere.“No one cares” was not a self pity-party, it was simply fact.

I hadn’t bothered to check my blog in a few weeks until today, and much to my surprise I’d steadily gained a few followers. No crazy through the roof numbers, but a few solid followers nonetheless. All without so much as a mention of a spanking, or an eightball of coke. The new stories were about nothing in particular, the small stuff. A ride on a motorcycle, a visit to my mom’s assisted living residence, the this-and-that of everyday life. No saucy key words to entice, just simple stories about the pretty quiet life of a middle-aged chick, and interestingly, it seems to be enough to my new friends. My mind still accesses those extreme tales of my past as I look out my window every morning, but I’m feeling a want to stay in the present right now. My ponderings lack the bravado of 2009. They ring in an era of honesty - stories around sadness, boredom, hope, and occasional glee. And now that I see that a couple of strangers are watching, I might be inclined to jot a few of them down.