My brother kindly pointed out that I have disappeared off the face of the world wide web, if not the earth itself, for a couple of weeks and nudged me back to posting.

It's nice to know that someone on the other side of the world misses you when you go missing.

I was, unfortunately, on my way out the door for my church's women's retreat when I got his message, so I deferred acting on it until I came home. And then for a couple days more, for no particular reason.

Anyway.

Hello again.

Shall I offer an explanation and/or excuse for my radio silence, or just pick up where I left off?

Ah, that was the problem the whole time.

Briefly: I have spent the last couple of weeks in what is technically known as a "funk." One of the symptoms of which is a snowballing tendency to self-isolate. Start with a couple minor circumstantial stressors, add a domino-like cascade of bad self-care decisions, and swoop! -- there I am again at the bottom of an all-too-familiar pit. I actually considered blogging about my mood itself a couple of times in the midst of it, but I didn't have the energy to make decisions about self-disclosure in the moment, so I took the path of least resistance and kept to myself.

Keeping to myself too much is not good for me.

Fortunately --

1. I know this. Sometimes it takes me a while to act on it, but not as long as it used to.

2. I have friends who providentially interfere in my life, keeping me from keeping too much to myself even when I am so inclined. Some of them are wonderfully persistent about it. Others have good timing and catch me in a moment when I'm not hiding. Others I still owe e-mails or return phone calls. (If you're reading this: it's not you, it's me.)

3. I have a church (major overlap with point 2) that gets me out of my shell and out of my self with enough regularity to break through my self-imposed exiles. It helps to have a safe place to go that doesn't require any serious preparation and planning. Of course, church is a lot more than that, but it is that, and that is important.

That is probably more of my navel-gazing than you needed to know. But if anyone other than my brother has been wondering why I disappeared, that's the gist of it.