Did you miss me?

So, I’m sitting here with approximately 100 surgical steel stitches in a line from above my navel well down into what Victorian pornography euphemistically calls the “Mound of Venus.”

I can’t have sex, drive my sports car (or any car for that matter), swim, or luxuriate in a hot bath, all things that I consider essential to life. No matter how long I stand in the shower, I can’t approximate the feeling of well being that I get while submerged in water.

There are other things I can’t do which I don’t miss. Grocery shopping at the “you-bag it” store and lifting heavy sacks, for instance. And as a water aerobics classmate cheerfully crowed, “You won’t be able to vacuum for months.”

I had a “complete hysterectomy.” Did you know that there is a difference between a “total” and a “complete.”? Yeah, me neither, but just like booking a “direct flight,” when you really mean “non-stop,” there is a difference. If you’ve ever sat in an airport for four hours waiting for your “direct “ flight to resume, you’ll know what I mean.

You might be sitting there wondering why the hell I haven’t written for months. I don’t really have any good excuse other than I didn’t feel like it. I always said that I never wrote for free — there was always money or a grade attached. Until one day there wasn’t.

When I parted company with the local newspaper, I had been writing my column for almost ten years. People liked it, and my editors continued to pay me for writing it. The pittance they paid was just enough to complicate collecting unemployment and my tax filing, but it was something.

I got lots of positive feedback from people in the community. But in August of 2010, caught in the bind that all newspapers find themselves in, they decided my $200 a month could be better spent elsewhere, and discontinued my column.

I felt a certain obligation to my readers, and quickly took the column online. I tried to make it appear the same time that the column ran —Sunday morning— but I didn’t always make it. Often, I spent all morning Sunday writing about what my husband and I did on Saturday night.

It was terrific not having to answer to anyone — at the end, my editors were wanting to know in advance what I was writing about, to avoid trouble with management. About the time they told me I was writing about my granddaughter Charlotte too often, I was more than ready to cut the cord.

I could include photos, link to Wikipedia entries for those who didn't get some of my obscure references (I once had to defend using the expression “being between Syclla and Charybdis” at the paper because “people won’t understand it”), and embed videos. It was fun.

Until one day, it wasn’t fun any more. It felt like work. Unpaid work. My husband, who writes for the sheer love of it, doesn’t really understand. He asked for whom I wrote, expecting to hear me say, “me,” but that wasn’t my answer. Like the class clown, if I'm not getting money, I need affirmation, an audience, and I wasn’t getting it.

And then I realized I could quit. One Sunday, I just didn’t write. No explanations, I just didn’t. And if it takes 21 days to form a habit, I can tell you it takes fewer days to quit a habit you’re weary of.

Some people make a living out of their websites, some make enough to cover their expenses, but trying to make the site pay looked like another job to me, and I already had a very taxing one: teaching composition to college freshman. Which was another reason I had trouble writing: when push came to shove, my papers needed to be graded before I could write about our latest Los Angeles adventure.

But now I feel like writing again, perhaps because I realize that I want to write — even if it is just for me. After spending the last month waiting for this surgery to determine whether the softball-size mass on my left ovary was cancer or a fibroid tumor, I have had plenty of time for reflection. Thankfully, it was the latter, which really gives me no excuse for not fulfilling my potential.

If you are a writer, you write. It’s really simple. And I am a writer, have been since roughly fourth grade. My forced reflection period has convinced me that I need to get some of the book plans I have out of my head and onto paper, but for now, just writing this blog is a baby step.

So I’ll make a deal with you, what’s left of my readership. I’ll continue to write, and I’ll strive for posting weekly. But if I can’t, don’t be surprised. It probably means I’m torturing freshman somewhere by trying to coax a decent thesis statement out of them.

For your part, throw me a bone in the form of a comment or an email once in a while, just to let me know you’re still out there. At the right of the page is a “Subscribe by email” link. Just put your email address in there, and when I post, it will come to your mailbox . Or you can follow me with a Google or Yahoo reader by clicking the “subscribe” button.

Give the class clown some love.

Ps. While I've been on hiatus (no, that's not where the Kennedys go in the summer, as Neil Young once asked an interviewer) Charlotte has gained a little brother, Desmond. Tune in next week for the adventures of Super Chub!