Bravado, or Fail Better

So as in uffish thought I, um, sat,  pondering dusting off these pages yet again--it being New Year's Day and all that goes with that--I also thought how I'm marching in lock-step with thousands? millions? of other lapsed bloggers, all armed with fresh resolve to blog more regularly, to post or update or tweet with greater frequency or wit or style or relevance. Or snark.


I was reminded of this, too, by seeing that a dear friend had posted up something today on his equally dusty blog,  after many  months of silence. I smiled at this seeming synchronicity, and then wondered (after posting an appropriately snarky comment), if there's a  measurable uptick in bandwidth on Blogger and Wordpress and Twitter today. Were I a betting person, I'd bet on it.


...Why do we think this way when facing arbitrary time-points of social convention like the start of a new year? What futile creatures we are. And we know it... yet we're driven by this inchoate need to reach out to our fellows-in-futility,  in ways that feel meaningful, even if in reality it's a meek shout into a largely indifferent void. 


I was reminded, in the latest post by Mike of Idiotic Hat, who writes with unswerving grace, of the wonderful Beckett bit: ".... Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. " 


This weekend just ended was a singularly painful one: I had to say the final goodbyes to my mother, who died just before Christmas. I'm not yet in a place where I can write of these things with fluency or any kind of balance--it's possible I may never be--but during the raw times, when the pain waits just beneath the surface, there's comfort in shouting, even into a void.