This has been the longest hiatus from being online than ever before in life ... .

And what have I done with the time, you ask?

So much, but mostly I've rediscovered myself from other eras while cleaning out boxes and crates of "stuff" accumulated over a lifetime; yellowed into umbers on newsprint guaranteed to escape this life maybe even before I do. Fascinating writings that leave me wondering why I didn't realize my ability to put into words so many (what turns out to be) really profound thoughts and concepts.

I've found enough brief pieces of "Bettyness" to fill this blog for weeks to come, and I'm delighted to have had the time to find them after all of the years of unbelievable busyness. Perhaps I have need to give thanks to my frustrating Internet provider after all. Without this extended period of being offline -- it all might have continued to sit in piles in the backs of drawers, file cabinets, and closets never to have seen the light of day until I died and it was all gathered up and tossed by those with little reason to explore them for whatever value they might hold.

Many were written in short pieces to online "strangers" in Seniornet who became so important me throughout the 90s and beyond. Because of the limitations of space on bulletin boards I developed a kind of talent for brevity that seemed to lack nothing by way of meaning. It is this that most impressed me as each was revealed in the exercise that started out as a kind of absent-minded effort to cut down on the clutter of paper that was becoming impossible to live with.

Unfortunately, the pile of to be tossed trash was a total failure as I began to read and re-read clippings and brief personal essays. The answer may be that I can toss them as I type them here, right? That way I'll have the best of all worlds by holding on to the best of them and cleaning out the clutter at the same time.

Maybe I can find even photos to go with them as I post ...

Fortunately, most are dated though there is no way to get them into sequence at this point. But since my blog has been a hodgepodge of impressions written and experienced out of sequence anyway, someone else may someday give the notes some order. Maybe not. But it won't matter since I'll be long gone and perhaps someone will have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that time is meaningless anyway -- and that the only thing that matters (as I've always known) is this moment; . now, and that all else is illusion.

Hmmmmmm .... .