I shouldn't ramble, at least not when I'm writing. Telling stories is a whole other experience, as many of you can attest, but when I write, there is never anyone there who I have to worry about, so I feel no pressure to explain odd minutiae, and therefore I have less tangential digressions, some of which have been known to get me so off-track from the original tale that it may be weeks before I remember that I never finished telling that which I had started. That can get a little aggravating for me, because I know that when I set my mind to it and just tell a story with the salient points and a modest amount of detail, it can be a good time by most everyone. I won't say everyone, because then some would comment on that just for the sake of saying so. But I already know this. It runs in the family.

However, tonight I feel like rambling. I'm not sure why. I guess I have a case of the blahs, and I'm hoping that it won't become a full-blown case of the blues. I have little reason to feel this way, but it never seems that it takes much to bring me down a little, even when I've been riding high. Lately I have been home with my family and seen several friends during the past 2 weeks, I have only worked a little, and I have been given so much blessing by them and by God Himself even, that to feel even a little down seems practically sacrilegious. I don't think it is, but it sure would be nice to feel a little more like I should. One cannot force good feelings, and so I take what I feel and have to think about it. Because that's what I am good at- thinking. I am a thinker by nature and rational to the last. It gets me in trouble with feeler-types all the time, because I often overlook the feeler issues because the reason is given so much more power in my decision making. Well, when I feel blah (or blue), I often react by over-thinking. I think I should think less, but then I think that maybe I'm over thinking and should just think about it some more. But on seventy-second thought, maybe... You get the idea.

There are several things that could have led me to this place today. Maybe the fact that I am about to leave on the first of 3 trips, the third of which is to work on the other side of the world is bringing me down, because I will miss my family and friends. It could be that just the fact that my bid to buy a condo here in Houston is not going as smoothly as it should is getting to me. But I don't think that those are the real problem. Sure they are important. But I can handle them just fine. I think it is something else: in cases such as these, the mightiest blow is usually dealt unknowingly by the softest hands. Perhaps I shouldn't set myself up on a tee so often when there are women with clubs nearby.

Email is a wonderful tool. I use it a lot. I love using it, as it keeps me in touch with friends all over the world. But tools have a funny way of being dangerous when used incorrectly. I think I have been doing that. And it may have come back and bitten me. Again (yes, I've done it before). How do I avoid this though, when it is such a great way of communicating? By being more direct. Letters are similar, but email is so easy that there is a temptation to write something quickly and send it, not thinking that another person could interpret it in any way other than the one intended, but sure enough that other way is more likely the way it will be interpreted, especially when it is to a person of the opposite sex, even if said person (a woman obviously in this case) tends to think more rationally than her peers when it comes to things like that. I suppose that it matters little when I can see that I haven't been direct enough to require a response to the real question. For example I have written a lot of poetry here in this blog, and though some of it was inspired by the person to whom I refer, I don't think that she actually knows that. Now I am not saying that my poetry is directly related to her, but only that some of it has been inspired by my thoughts of her. The fact that she doesn't know it has nothing to do with her intuitiveness, but rather my writing that has been less than obvious. Mostly I like to think that I have written these things in a veiled sort of way because several people read it and I don't want to be too personally revealing, but the truth is that I am not sure that I have decided that I even want to be that revealing to her. Maybe that is why today when I received an email that didn't say exactly what I wanted to read that I began to feel a bit down. Circumstances so seldom do that to me, but a word from a good friend so easily can cause a wound. That's even mentioned by Solomon in the Proverbs, so I'm in good company.

So what do I do now? That is the question that I have to answer. Dear reader, you may offer suggestions, sage advice, or the banter of never-ending witticisms, and all comments are appreciated, but I think I already know the answer. Or at least where to find it.