Hello darling, sitting here, damp from my shower, towel wrapped around me, my hair, freshly washed, dripping wet. It's past six, but it can't be getting dark yet, yet it doesn't seem that overcast -- the light is that, nearly, of the gloaming, or of approaching dusk. Another day of heavy housework, in advance of the house swap. Today, the downstairs curtains and drapes laundered and ironed, and half the solarium scrubbed. I gave out before I could complete it. It's a very dusty room, from the pellet stove. Every surface needed a swipe -- such as each individual slat of the five wood blinds in the room -- I got to two. Etc., etc. So - tomorrow, I'll finish that room.

I'm sitting here, too, even as I type, feeling a little sad, and conflicted, and torn - about my blog, whether I should continue it or not. It just raises so many issues, that I'm grappling with. I've been putting myself out there (and I don't mean in this blog, I mean in trying purposefully to meet a potential serious love interest), and the fact of my blog -- well, some find it delightful, others - others I might potentially be interested in - are disturbed by it. Which I don't blame anyone for being taken aback. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot with it either. I'm not Emily Dickinson -- I'm not prepared to give up the potential of true love for my writing. Or am I? Do I want to give up my blog - for a man? Does it have to come down to that? That's rather stark.

I don't know what I'm going to do, not tonight anyway. I don't really have to decide definitively tonight. But this blog's days may be numbered, so I guess I'm telling you that - again. I mean, I can't work against myself.

And you know, as frank as this blog has been, in expressing some difficult feelings I've had, grappled with issues, that I've never used it as some way to "out" anyone in any way. To say I feel that that would be "uncool" -- is an understatement.

I guess I just want to say, too, that I know people are justifiably very worried about their privacy and the internet. And I was doing a workout once to Anderson, and there are individuals out there who devote entire websites with the express purpose of "outing" whatever category of individual that they in their rigid belief system believe deserves the "scarlet letter" of their name prominently disclosed. I'm aware, for example, from that program, of a website that thus exposes "cheaters," men having extra-marital affairs, whose (presumably) disgruntled liaisons (I guess), go out of their way to vent their anger by projecting it in an overt act of exposure and public humiliation of the guy. Or woman (as the case may be). I imagine that that website (which I obviously won't dignify by even going through the blandest gesture to look for, I'm so -- 'not interested' is not the phrase - truly disgusted, that such a site would exist - that's more my feeling.)

So, I don't know. I write under a pseudonym -- so that I can be frank, in ways, about my feelings, and my experiences as a middle-aged woman -- or maybe, as someone thinks of me, as a woman in my prime. And yes, I do feel at a kind of "peak" in my life, my prime indeed.... oh I hope it's a cascading series of mountain peaks, truly, starting here now, and going on and on and on, for decades longer, well into my dotage.

So, I don't know, I'm wrestling with it, I don't have an immediate conclusion for the moment - except to note that I am not in search of material for my blog, in the form of for that reason looking for a relationship. Or turn that algebraic equation however you like -- I'm not looking for a relationship, as a way to provide content for my blog. No -- rather, my blog came about for me as a way to express myself, deeply, fully, somehow, to the ether, and then over time, one male muse or another, and sometimes both, and then back to one, transpired over the long trajectory of the two-and-a-half years of daily postings. It was as stark as this: without my blog, I had absolutely nobody, nobody at all, to communicate with, in any way, any kind of deeply human, intimate way. My life felt involuntarily silent and isolated... my blog was a way out of that... a singing bird. Not some passive-aggressive fast promiscuous hottie with a chip on her shoulder who has deep resentments against men.

Do you think that such a woman could write, the way I do, like this?