This thing about writing posts in a blog – at first it seems so what? so paper and pencil, only easier. So telling about something, but, gee, here you are all alone in a room by yourself – and you have no stamp. So who are you telling and why?

Of course, there are those times when it is such a nice way to share, with pictures that can expand and fill the whole screen or be sent miles away. And they just happened a few seconds ago.

But, I guess, some people use it to sort of share the things they really feel awkward about sharing. Maybe a writer is creating a scene in a movie that captures some emotion that will reach deep inside another. Because isn’t that what words are – coded pictures of life and how real it feels in your gut. How it makes your eyes brim, your throat constrict.

You write it up and there it is and you know pretty soon you are sending it across airwaves to maybe someone else, but you let that stay a little foggy in your mind. I mean, who are you to cry on someone’s shoulder. And then, finally, you realize one or two are there . . . and you stop being you – not all at once, not completely; but you protect them, misdirect them and sometimes entertain them. You do this because you cannot bring yourself to write you are frightened and sad and at a loss.

But you do write it, finally, because you are the type of person who just can’t be satisfied with a page of paper in a journal. You don’t want sympathy, really, you don’t. But for some reason in your tears and fears, you don’t want to be alone.

It could be that is where stories come from; they are just tales of a character wearing a mask on your face. Perhaps there are those of us who are, in our essence, a Budweiser commercial. See, I’m not at the end of my rope – not when there’s a puppy and big old horse tugging a smile at the corners of eyes and mouth.