Still sort of absent.

I seem to have fallen into a Vicious Cycle of Non-Posting. It goes like this: I am very inactive on LJ, so I am not exactly at the forefront of people's minds, so when I do post I only hear from people I am in touch with anyway, and I end up feeling a bit silly for posting in the first place, like I am shouting into a big, crowded room instead of just having a quiet conversation with the people I came with. I suppose there is a simple solution: to get more active, just as I would with Real Life socializing, but gah! It's so much harder to keep up now that I can't really do it from work where, after all, I spend the great majority of my waking hours. And then, with so many people talking about leaving LJ anyway, well, this doesn't seem like the best time to ramp up LJ activity. And finally, there is the usual problem of trying to catch up with people after a break of a few months, which I always find awkward: a few months are long enough that one is no longer up-to-date on a person's daily concerns, but at the same time it's not so long that many people will have made huge life changes worthy of deep discussion.

In other whiny news, I keep thinking about writing, but not doing it. This is partly caused by work (I thought I might write tonight, but it's 8:30 already and I am nowhere near ready to go home, so I doubt I will have the energy), partly by my new social circle (which consists mostly of people who consider "artistic" but unfashionable hobbies very silly), partly by my usual self-doubt (I now tend to accept that I know the bare basics of writing fiction, but these basics seem like such a feeble thing) and partly by a lack of inspiration (when one burns to write, one can ignore ego, and social censure, and even sensible concerns like saving brain-power for one's career.)

And that is all. Next time I will try to be funny.