Confessions of a Bad Blogger

So I am a very bad blogger: I haven't posted since --- ack --- July. Part of it is the ruined shoulder. It seems I passed the summer either in pain (and I mean a lot of pain), or at physio, or at work. And tempus fugit. And there is the general busyness of summer on the farm: there is always something to do, or fix, or (in the last resort) weeds to pull. Probably also there is the sort of vague discouragement that you're writing in an echo chamber: no one else is interested in your various brilliant insights. Oh well. Writing, at the heart of it, is an exercise in egotism, a notion that your thoughts are so vital, incisive and witty they deserve to be broadcast and repeated everywhere. You might as well have a sandwich board and a bell: Listen to me. . .it's important!

Ha.

Well the news is thus: my shoulder will finally be subject to the surgeon's blade (or scope, since it's arthroscopy) next month where various odd bits of joint and tendon and bone will be scraped and patched together. The good news is that I will recover normal usage. The bad news (or other good news, depending how you look at it) is that I will be off work for two months, maybe three, while the repaired joint heals. Lots of time for reflection, of a Friendly sort. I am not sure how I will handle the enforced demobility. I have some plans: do some writing, read a lot. . . a sort of involuntary sabbatical. But when I was immobilized with the ankle in June, I was nearly pulling out my hair in frustration after the first week.

What else? I was given a set of keys to the meetinghouse. I think this means I am truly a Quaker, even more so than the Minute concerning my membership which now adorns the meeting's books. It also frightens me deeply. Canadian Friends are so thin on the ground and our heritage so unique and fragile that having even this small responsibility to one of the last historic meetinghouses in use is worrisome. I don't mind opening the meetinghouse for worship of a Sunday; it's being the person last to leave that scares me.