We interrupt this lack of updates to bring you a special bulletin: Your not so humble lenslinger is tired of talking television. Hey, I slave over a glowing viewfinder for, like, eight hours a day sometimes. When I get home, there are “Honey-Do’s” to negotiate, teenager daughters to embarrass with my mere presence and a rather lippy Eskimo Spitz mix to parade around the neighborhood. By the time I plop down in front of my beloved Mac, I can’t always spell T-V, let alone wax poetically on its foibles and future. A shame really; if I could sync up my desire to write with my erratic ability, I might just be able to pry this camera off my shoulder for good. Then again, I can’t seem to add new music to my iPod without the assistance of my (embarrassed) 17 year old – who gets her vengeance by loading it down with songs from Phantom of the Opera. Why I’d think I could summon the muse and the tools at the same time makes about as much sense as anything Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote resonating with a high school senior in the year 2011.

But I digress.

Or to be more accurate, I’ve wandered away from my source material. That’s happened pretty regularly in my nearly even years of blogging and I’m more than certain it’ll happen again. Whereas I used to make some grand proclamation whenever my focus softened, I’ve leaned that announcing one’s plans is a sure-fire way to make God spit ocean water through his nose. But while I’m on the subject, let me assure you that I’m way to needy a writer-type to ever shut this blog down completely. I’ve come close a couple of times, but my fragile ego and strong desire to see this thing through always stops me from dismantling this compendium of snark. Simply put, there’s no downside to continuing. Unlike my day job – in which I fill two minutes or so news cast every (damn) day – the pace of publication for Viewfinder BLUES is totally up to me. Just remind me of that the next time I’m staring holes into my bedroom ceiling at four in the morning.

Or better yet, catch me on the lake.

That’s where you can find me these days, for I finally grew so tired of stepping over the kayaks in my garage that I now park them in the 816 acre watershed out behind my home The Lenslinger Institute.It’s proven surprisingly therapeutic, whether I’m racing dragonflies across Lake Brandt’s surface or simply bobbing for solitude off it’s heavily wooded shoreline. Ya know, I never thought I’d end up as that middle age guy in the plastic boat, but now that I’ve given up any hope of a sports car (wife got one), there may simply be no paddling back. And while there are less taxing forms of aquatic conveyance, I found that paddling is key. See, like mountain biking, poking around a lake (or river) is both calisthenic AND contemplative. Not to mention, you’re sitting down the entire time. That’s MY kind of workout! Yeah, sometimes I’ll just float there with one eye on the sky – should that alien spacecraft I’ve dreamed about ever hover over my vessel and beam the both of us aboard…

Maybe then I’d have something to write about.