...and we're back.

Hi!

Miss me?

I missed you.

Happy Easter!

It was a tough decision, whether to start blogging again. It's been a tough Lent. I really thought I was done with this, and with everything I could jettison, last February 14. You might have guessed from the tone that I was in bad shape, and you'd be right. (You're sensitive that way.) Seriously, I was completely demoralized, hopeless about my writing, burned out by my work, and ready to invest all the money I could grab on scratch-off games and sit on a high bridge while I went through them one by one, figuring to have either a big jackpot or a big plunge. The way I felt was, if I jumped in the river the worst thing that could happen was I'd be charged with littering.

But I'm still here. And I'm not rich. I'm not broke, either. Or wet.

I gave up some things for Lent, took on a couple of other things, and knew in my heart that I wasn't doing nearly enough considering how starved my spirit was feeling. Meanwhile, work got crazier. The world got crazier. And then Rusty Staub died.

Rusty, man.

So what happened to bring ol' Fred back?

Nothing. Everything. Somewhere in between. Hard to say.

Colonel Parker once told Elvis Presley's father, "Nothing changes." They would continue to sell and promote the Elvis brand as always, even though something had seriously changed -- Elvis had just died. Sometimes you try to resist change and have to face it anyway. Then again, to go from the preposterous to the sublime, the Disciples thought the world had come to an end when Jesus died. Three days later they found out it was just beginning.

Some good things did happen to me in the last 46 days, which I'll be talking about (no doubt) in the coming weeks -- nothing earthshaking though, not even for my little patch of earth. And yet I think something has changed. The guy who gets a horrible diagnosis resolves to live as before while fighting the disease; the guy who wins a big jackpot says he won't quit his job. Everything changed but they want nothing to change. I may be in one of those situations but I have no idea which.

I'll just close by saying that more than New Year's, more than Christmas, more than the Fourth of July, Easter is a time of new beginnings. I wish you a very happy and blessed Easter, and may the road take you ever upward.