A story about you and me

If you are the kind of person who comes to this website every Monday (NZST) looking for a new blogpost, the last month will have been quite a disappointing time for you (I’m also assuming, apropos of nothing, that these blogposts of mine are the only thing which brings a little joy and wonder to your week). I could say ‘But I’ve been travelling’, and you could say (and why you don’t I can’t quite understand) ‘But Matthew, you’ve been home for over two weeks, and also, you had your laptop with you whilst you were travelling. Oh, and Europe has a lot of internet. So, really?’

Now, understandably, I’d be pretty upset by this point; it’s quite obvious you’ve been surveilling me, and that’s just not very cool. Sure, I mostly tweet with a public account (and no, I’m not telling you about my Little Twitter account where I talk about you all the time), and there’s been Facebook updates and the like, but really, I just can’t be your external validation; you’re asking too much of me.

‘That’s not it, though’, you’ll likely respond, understandably worried that I’m assuming too much about you, your life, your wants and needs. And, truth be told, I’m beginning to think this is more about me than you. Maybe I’m the one who needs your validation; maybe I’m the one whose been worried about getting back into blogging after all this time. Perhaps you’ve gotten used to me not being around? Maybe you don’t need me anymore? Is it possible you’ve moved on, and that you’re not even reading this?

Perhaps what we both need is a safe space to re-engage with one another, a kind of catching up for coffee (not literally, of course… Well, unless that’s not uncomfortable for you. It’s not for me…), where we can chat and not engage in any kind of recriminations. I could tell you how I became an award’s show host in Latvia; I’ve been told my suit was the bee’s knees.

Or maybe I could ask you if you have a friend who can read Latvian, because then they could tell me what this article really says about me. I’m quite pleased by the fact I appear in the masthead.

Then, after all that, if it turns out you’re still interested, I could give you some audio of the trip. Perhaps you’d like to hear about my time in Riga, or listen in on a talk I gave in Turku. I think you’d like what I said. Well, I hope you will, but I don’t want to burden you.

Maybe after all that, you’ll come back again on Mondays. Maybe after all this, I’ll be back to blogging about the conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theory theories I encounter on a day-by-day basis.

I’d like that. I think you would too.