If I follow, I FOLLOW.

I don't get overwhelmed by crowds, forests, freeways.  I've followed as many as 180 people at one time. Yes! I stop at that number and I reassess every few months or so.  If I haven't heard from THAT person, and after visiting her/him I still don't get a visit back, I drop her/him.

Why 180?

Because that is the number of students I carried on the roll when I was teaching.  I was trained to keep track and study and encourage and know all those young people, who, after just a semester or year, they would change and move on.

So, I know the drill. People come and people go. While they are in front of me, we have a relationship of sorts. If they want to be invisible, it is not going to work too well.  Oh sure, they can lurk around and borrow some paper here, a picture there. I don't see their coming and going directly. But, I do notice their absence.

My question: why do people sign up to follow and never stop to leave a comment? We are not a newspaper. We are not a magazine either. We are blogs, relating personal stories and commentaries of personal significance.  I want to know how you live, what you eat for supper when you're tired, where you go on vacation, how frustrated you become with your partner. I want to know your habits, your tastes, your opinions.

I want to know how another human manages to survive in this forest called life.

Now. if you want to brag and list all your blessings and possessions, go ahead. I'll clap at the right point in the conversation. But, I may not hang around too long.  You see, I can listen to Mr. Trump and get the same over-the-top-I shouts. I can go to UTube and watch "How to stop cats from pissing on your car." for sheer entertainment value. Don't tell me what you paid for your merchandise, either. Stuff doesn't catch my attention.

Stories do.
Tell it to me in your words.
From your seat.

I'm glad you found me. Now, let me know you.

Roads out of Here

I love photografs that can't be placed. This one could be Italy, or France or...Memories are like that. They are like agates we pick up on a beach and take home, filling a big jar on the window sill. Each agate was a small time in life we wanted to treasure, polish, keep for eternity.

When we write our story down, describe a day here, a road there, we leave the present and reconstruct the past. It will be a touched-up past, photoshopped, cropped, embellished with ribbons and perfume.
It will become our creation of that past.

But it will still be who we were, and who we thought we were. This last part, the part about how we view our lives, gets lost and hidden. The best part of us is how we see who we are. We become the people we admire, the peopble we want to be. We decide to take the road our of town.

We are also from somewhere, from somebody else's dream, those who encouraged or discouraged to dream, those who believed in us and helped us fly, or those whose fears and despair we clutched to and adopted as our own cloak of defense. We can thank God, our parents, our teacher, our ministers and mentors, our spouses and our children, but we took those steps toward our very own tomorrows.