Pushed, pulled, poked, prodded, persuaded and pestered, here I come kicking and screaming into the blogosphere.

Please to understand, my prolonged resistance to doing this had nothing to do with distaste for blogs or blogging. Quite the contrary. And therein lies the problem.

You see, I Know How I Get.

And how I get is… consumed. And it’s scary.

Look, I don’t pretend to have invented obsession. But sometimes I really think I’m the poster child for that old saw about having a hammer and suddenly discovering that everything in the universe looks like a nail.

Let me illustrate. ‘Long about 1994 or so, I was quietly minding my own business (which happened at the time to be computer consulting), when I started to notice that nearly everybody I knew was proselytizing for the novels of Patrick O’Brian. I had to read them, I was told; I would just love them, I was told; they were right up my alley, I was told. Yep, I was told, all right. I dug in my heels and I held out against the onslaught for months. Sheer cussedness? Sure. But mostly fear.

I didn’t doubt that I would love the books. I was, if anything, afraid of loving them too much.

Was I right? Um. Less than a year after I caved and started reading, I had a BOOK CONTRACT to write a companion volume for the series. (And by “I,” I mean “we,” but that’s a story for another time.) Next thing I knew, I was the recognized authority on the subject. You know, like the old joke - “Yesterday I didn’t know how to spell ‘culinary historian’; now I are one.” Media interviews; fan mail; scholarly consultations; lecture invitations - from places like Harvard and the Smithsonian and the US Navy, no less. Cooking and pontificating for NPR and the BBC. Me! (Us!) I mean, seriously…! Hello? A little over the top, perhaps? This wasn’t just the effects of garden-variety obsesssion; it was a full-scale blast through the looking glass, a bourne whence no traveler returns.

Mind you, I am not complaining: that adventure changed my life in more ways than I can begin to assess, and was far more fun than decent people oughta have. I’m only saying… it was surreal. It was more than unexpected; it was unimaginable. And all because I got a kick out of somebody’s writing - all because I got carried away by a whim.

You see? Been there, done that, wrote the cookbook.

So here I am now, already up to my ankles in socks (yet another unexpected departure, thank you very much), my hands already full to overflowing with designing and knitting and writing and beading (what, you thought those Kitri kits beaded themselves…?) and fending off the attacks of the Sock Muse. Again, this is certainly nothing to complain about - but all I need now is another fershtunkene obsession. So now I up and start a blog? What, am I nuts? (Please don’t answer that.) I know just enough to wonder where this will take me. I know enough to be sure it will be a place I never knew existed. I know enough to realize that there is nothing I can do about it, nothing whatsoever. That all I can do is go with it and just wait for it to blindside me. Surreal, all over again.

It’s coming. It’s coming. It may already be here. For days now I haven’t been able to stir a step without stumbling over blog fodder. Oh, help. It’s out of my hands. Don’t say I didn’t warn me.

I feel sorry for everyone who knows me. It is going to be - as usual - a wild ride.

I’m reminded of another old joke (and no, it has not escaped my observation that my life seems to be made up almost entirely of punch lines from old jokes) - the one where Adam, on first seeing Eve, says to her: “Better stand back, honey. I don’t know how big this thing gets.”

(Oh - about my qualifications: yes, I knit; yes, I have animals. I’ll have plenty to say about both. But for right now I think I’d better go lie down in a dark room.)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Bloggerei. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.