Nose tracks. My front windows are covered with nose tracks – dog-height smudges and smears made up of dried slobber and snot. At this moment, two of our dogs are busy creating more. They’re seated in front of my office window, gazing out at the street.

The dogs are waiting for something – anything – to appear in their line of vision, because they believe that if they can see it, it must be invading their territory. Since they can see the neighbors’ yards and the cul-de-sac where cars turn around, this leads to a lot of pointless commotion. And excited smudging of the window glass.

I really need to clean those windows, but the only time it occurs to me, I’m always in the middle of something else – like writing this post. Okay, I COULD get up right now and retrieve the Windex and a paper towel, but you and I both know THAT’s not going to happen.

Oh! So, Hey! How have you been?

Here I am, making an appearance after my self-imposed exile from this blog. Postwise, I skipped right from Halloween to the new year. You might be asking, why did I exile myself? Well, for a while last year, I questioned whether this blog served any purpose. If it was worth spending the time on. I felt that I needed to evaluate what I was writing and why. To figure out whether there was a better use of my time and energy. So around Thanksgiving, I decided to step back. I wanted to take a break from writing here and see if I missed it – if my thoughts still needed a place to land. If my unique perspective on my life needed to be shared.

You know what I learned? Not much. If I’m honest, I’ll admit that I didn’t even miss writing here very much. It took me until about now to even WANT to blog. And I’m still not sure WHY I’m supposed to write about the funny stuff that happens around here. I think I struggle with assigning value to something that’s usually just pure entertainment. (At least I hope it’s entertaining.) How does humor fulfill my purpose? How does art fulfill the Great Commission?

I really don’t know. A friend who’s an artist said that he believed that I should let the fingers write what they want to write. Just put it out there.

So here I am. I’m back. I can’t promise to post daily or anything, but I’m back at my post, like my dogs at the front window. Hopefully not just creating a pointless commotion. Then again, if I am, at least I’ll have fun smudging the glass.