A very dear friend of mine, one of my oldest friends actually, asked me the other day – in not so many words – how I decided what went into the blog, and why some people were never mentioned despite their importance in my life, or my history with them. I’ve been thinking about that, rather a lot since it was mentioned, and I think that perhaps it deserves an explanation. Because Torin may not be the only one wondering…perhaps wanting to know how this whole thing “works”
The first bit is the simplest: I write what’s happening in my life at any given moment, usually that’s far away from the world I grew up in and most of the people I know. Therefore, I reference the day to day people around me and the ever shifting world of the ship. When I do come home for vacation, I tend to come close to shutting the blog down; because to be honest, despite leading a very public life by default, I’m truly a private person, preferring to keep my cards close to my chest and most of myself to myself. Once I’m off duty nothing is anyone else’s affair, and once my home door closes behind me I tend to quite enjoy cutting off me and mine from the rest of the world. Work is work, travel is travel, but home – and what happens there – is still mine.
Second bit: if you’re not mentioned on the page. It means just that: you’re not mentioned on the page. It doesn’t – by any means – mean you’re not in my life, not important to me, not in my mind, my memory or my heart, it just means that my wandering words haven’t found you. That is neither a good or a bad thing, and it is certainly not a slight.
Third bit: there are a lot of things I write that never get posted, just as much of the blog doesn’t make it into the books. What I choose to share and not share varies from day to day and mood to mood, and that’s just life. I’m actually quite picky about what I post.
Long and the short of it: these pages don’t even come close to revealing a fraction of my life, of who I am, or what paths I follow. What you see here are fragments of a rainbow reflected through a crystal, if you look closely you might get a piece of the whole, but you’ll never get it all. No one ever does. The “labels” and nicknames and such used in these pages have developed in some cases over years and countless different layers of circumstance, and in some cases have held on despite the fact that they may no longer be the most accurate things in the world; but who wants to change such little things? There are stories behind everyone’s narratives that no one but that person knows, there are in jokes behind everyone’s smiles that no one ever sees, and that goes for everyone certainly not just me. In life, nothing is ever truly simple. This may be my story, but it’s only one tiny little layer of the big picture, and much of my own story isn’t even mine to tell, it involves countless other people and countless other circumstances that touch me and affect me and sometimes change my whole scheme of events, but aren’t mine, so yes – of course I leave things out.
So, in case any of you were feeling slighted, or were confused or wondering at the reason behind something you may have read: there is no need to be. These are just words, a brief, rustling recording of a piece of an ever-shifting life with so many parts and pieces and important players that I could never name them all. I count on all of you knowing who you are, and knowing how much I care about you, and that if you will let me, I will always keep you around;
God bless, goddess bless
Namaste and all the rest
Happy holidays
Shaughnessy