I was embarrassed just as much with the question as I was with the answer.

I had been so excited to get this site up and running, and then just when things were rolling I fell into a series of very unfortunate circumstances. I broke my foot and I broke my jaw, and as a result I broke my spirit for keeping most of the pleasures in my life in order. One of those pleasures was this blog.

I’ll give a much more detailed foot and mouth report later, but here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to friend in which I describe what’s been going on these past two months. I think I capture my shattered hopes and dreams quite nicely.

My life has gone to absolute hell these last two weeks.

I haven’t even been able to stay on top of my emails. It’s a wonder I am still employed.

My foot is in a cast, and I have to go everywhere on crutches. This means I can go NOWHERE; you can’t get far on crutches. At work, I can’t even get from my classroom to the mailroom because it is too fucking far. They won’t offer any assistance for me (the disability resource center is for STUDENTS, and I am not a students). I get no paid time off. I have 7 more weeks of this.

I spend all my time at home in bed or in the reclining chair. Getting to the bathroom is hard. At night, my upstairs neighbor blasts us with endless thumping music from 11:00pm -6:00am. I feel like I am in a coffin.

And then there’s the bad part.

The bad part is that something is horribly wrong with my jaw. It has been hurting for months now, getting worse, and worse. I can barely eat, because it is so painful to chew. Yesterday I ate only soup all day. I went to the doctor, and they said to go to the dentist. I went to the dentist and he had no idea what was wrong with me; he pulled a tooth out of my mouth but it didn’t work. It is not going away and is freaking me out.

The closest anyone has come to a diagnosis is this bullshit umbrella term called TMJ, which basically just means “extreme jaw pain the won’t go away.” They treat it by putting you on musscle relaxers for the rest of your life. Jaw hurting today? Take this pill. That’s about it. No cure, just one of those things we don’t understand. I’ll spend the rest of my life like this. I’ll never be able to eat a hardroll sandwich again.

I am not doing well.

Suffice it to say, my enthusiasm for web logging did not sustain itself. I could barely keep on top of my grading, let alone the other aspects of my life.

However, I do not offer this up as excuse, but a humble explanation to the questiom, “Why no updates?”

I plan to rectify the situation. Although my foot is still in a cast, my jaw still in pain, and my upstairs neighbor still a tremendous douchebag, my spirit has slowly returned. As you can see from the last two posts, this current one, and the posts to come: I’m back, baby!

I also realize that the saddest thing on the entire internet is a dead blog whose final post reads: I’m back, and the blogging shall continue. I wrote several days of posts in advance, to be published at a healthy rate, as an insurance policy against that happening to me.

Here we go again!

Yes it is all a joke. Or, at least, it is written jokingly. I do not really feel that I know any answers, nor do I think myself particularly superior to anyone else, least of all tenured faculty or my students. I just happen to find that style of humor very amusing, and it creeps out in my more casual writings.

So please, before you jump to the conclusion that I am a pompous asshole, snarkily sneering at all that you hold dear, remind yourself that there is light humor in my writing. I feel the overall essence of my arguments and commentary is valid, but the manner in which I present it is more often than not, to be taken with a grain of salt, and a smile.

* Which I feel compelled to constantly remind them is not a word.