Imagine my shock to log in to the ole blog today only to find that all of my posts from the past two years have disappeared. I’m not exactly sure what to do. I posted them all online, so I don’t have any backup copies to speak of. All of that wit and wisdom… gone! That’ll teach me to update Wordpress without a backup. Seriously though, I wonder where they are now. Have they been disappeared by the powers that be? Are they trapped in some pseudo-literal Guantanamo reserved for tortured logic? Sigh…
Luckily, not much has been happening with me in the past couple years. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve even considered giving up the blog for good. There just didn’t seem to be anything more to write about. The problem with writing from an outside perspective in an interesting part of the world, is that eventually you get sucked in. Eventually, you become an insider. Not even an insider really, it’s more that you just become used to the wild and wacky ways things work. This was very apparent to me when members of my family were visiting Karachi. I’d be swerving my way through traffic, cursing the inept, while they were snapping photos, marveling at the wonders of a family of five balanced on a motorcycle and exclaiming, “Look! A camel.” At that moment, I realized how very mundane the cultural vibrancy had become for me. No wonder I’d been having trouble coming up with things to write about. That very moment (well, realistically, it was later in the day, I was busy driving after all) I resolved to keep posting about my life and travels in the Land of the Pure. Surely someone would still find it novel and interesting out on the world wide interwebs. But now, of course, all that is gone. The posts are gone. I could cry.
In any case, I suppose that this will be the last post. My last hurrah for the several people who stopped checking the blog long ago. What’s the point really? Besides, blogs are passe now, are they not? People have moved on. No one has time to read paragraphs anymore. Our ADD society has moved on to Twitter and the insight that is gleaned from 150 characters or less. Boiled down blogs, that’s what we need. And so perhaps, it is time to give up the ghost. What more is there to write, when so much has been lost?
But no, I refuse to give in. Forget the last two years. As I was saying, not much has happened anyway. I travelled through Northern Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, ran a school for a couple of years and had many strange and unexpected adventures, many involving a side-kick. That’s about it really. Oh yes, I also got married and moved back to Canada. But what of it? Now is not the time to dwell on the past. Now is the opportunity to move forward. A whole new day for the blog. New stories to be told. An inauguration of sorts. And if there is any day for inaugural proceedings, I think it’s today.
And to all of you who might say, “Hey Dave, quit the crap. You just haven’t posted anything for the last two years, ya lazy bum!” well, I say to them: Prove it.