Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Readers of Yesteryear

I have a past.

I have a blogging past.

I have a file full of comments that go back to 2005 in the archives of an email account linked to my former blog.

I remember the first comment on any post I had written. From his home in Mexico City, a fellow blogger wrote about the intense admiration and love he felt for a priest. My long-ago past as a seminarian and what I wrote about my decision to abandon those early goals and to pursue a life alongside another man had snared this reader’s interest.

Google helped readers find me. I was not an overly cautious blogger when it came to naming organizations and parishes and schools that had figured in my life. I named internal conflicts that other people recognized. A number of bloggers wrote posts about my blog.

I wrote about a life that some people had not thought possible. I had a career that was not always a safe one to identify publicly if you were living with another man. I had a family who supported me and welcomed my partner. I had a spiritual life that provided the surest interpretive thread to connect a long-ago John with the person I had become.

I wrote about a life that readers occasionally admitted they envied and wanted. To be honest, I wanted people to envy it. I seemed to need the assurance that I had gotten a life that other people would want. I could weave musings about home life and fall in love with it all over again.

Writing Cabin goes back to the fall of 2007 when an anonymous reader of my former blog wrote a series of letters whose denunciatory message eventually reached a range of people, including my employer. I got cautious, I got careful. I have written here about that time. I contacted readers who had followed me for years and asked them to help me start afresh.

Since then my life has changed in significant ways. On the surface, mine is no longer an easy success story. Not everyone would want the kind of transition through which I have been moving.

I do, though.

I love where it is going while it is still hard to name where it is going.

It seems time to extend a hand to those who used to read what I wrote and whose writings had been part of my day. Maybe more than a few of us have learned lessons about courage that we never suspected we could handle.

Welcome back!

5 comments:

Julie Kertesz - me - moi - jk said...

Thank you for putting me between those to whom you give a hand to follow you to your writing cabin,

last I remember, you came to Paris and I was very disapointed that finally we could not meet,


you were very much in love and happy, I hope you did not have big catastrphones from that time on, but whatever it happened you could take something good from it, on the long range.

I could not belive, but alas I do, some could be so afwull as write to your employer whoever that could be, but alas in life as on web, there are different people, not all wonderful and good, also most, are.

I would not have thought your marriage was not public but I do understand that there are many prejudices in the world.

I loved always to read you, and will be happy to put your blog, if you do want it so only, between my "vient de paraitre" in my french blog - or my London blog, because I live now in London, writing in two blogs and langueages each day,

There is always hope, as you say it so well, sometimes we do not get all what we hope for - but instead we get something even more wonderful or as great - that we never dreamed of.

let me know if you want me to put your blog or not into Il y a de la vie apres 70 or Julie70inLondon, or not.

Ur-spo said...

I am honored so to be a fan of yours.

Jeff said...

Thanks for inviting me back to your writings. I look forward to reading you! -jeff

John said...

It is great to hear the old voices and the new mixing.

Thanks to you all!

Anonymous said...

I love the writing. I love the prose. I love the imagery. I love the celebration of the simple things of being. I love the subtle nuances of beauty--a book or a house or a garden or an author--and I treasure our years of friendship. I am honored to occasionally peek inside a person I so admire. Life is so brief and fragile. To share such moments of one's life is a wealth untold. Grief is heavy. Others lighten the load. Thank you.
Mal