The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger

                                        If a tree falls in the forest .......

I began writing this blog to fill the hole left in my life when exchanging letters with an old friend in Scotland started to become a task, rather than a pleasure, and died of inattention.

But I found that I missed that bit of letter writing which didn't involve the turgid factual reporting of family and weather news – that bit where my id took over from my ego, that bit where I could froth and rant at stupidity, ignorance, intolerance, injustice, inequity and other perceived evils in society. Or simply express random thoughts about random things in sentences.

What I really missed was the surprise and delight I experienced at the unexpected directions a written sentence can take, and the occasionally hilarious things that magically appear mid-sentence, seemingly autonomously, without conscious input from the writer.

(It's obviously a bit much to hope that a reader will experience the same emotions, but, if that were to happen, it would be an unintentional, incidental, happy bonus.)

Here is my dilemma: 
At the bottom of each blog, there is a "Post a Comment" space where readers can post comments, anonymously or otherwise. 
So far there has been one. 
One in over three thousand readers! 
How much time does it take to write "This is crap!" in a comments space?

Years ago, I presented a lecture by telephone conference. After about 15 minutes of speaking into a silent phone, I began to feel that there was no one listening. That they had all put their phones down and were getting on with their lives doing something more interesting. 

It was quite unnerving. 

I needed the reassurance of response.

Writing this blog feels the same.