It’s a fact: If you stumble around in an existential haze long enough, people will start calling you out! At work, at the deli, at the random head-on collision… if ONE MORE person asks me why I’m not blogging anymore, I’m gonna have to come up with an answer! So far though, I’ve only mumbled a half-response while stifling the deployment of my middle finger. Just today, I was touring WRAL-TV when some very nice strangers piled accolades on the words I used to string together. If that wasn’t enough to make me stare holes through my windshield on the way back home, I plopped down in the middle of what was once The Lenslinger Institute only to discover a eulogy of sorts from News Blues editor Mike James…

“Veteran news photographer Stewart “Lenslinger” Pittman, whose Schmuck Alerts and flowery prose always made us smile, hasn’t posted to his blog ‘Viewfinder Blues’ for more than a month. Last we heard, he was recovering from a painful divorce and was struggling with writer’s block and career fatigue.”

No. He. Didn’t. Okay, so he did. And you know what makes it so much worse? He’s 100% correct. I am recovering from a painful divorce (to-be) and I’m damn sure struggling with writer’s block and career fatigue. That first condition is more my business than yours, but I can tell you this: my wedded bliss is distant history and while I will never, ever, ever understand why, it’s something I’m learning to accept. This realization, of course, hasn’t come without some collateral damage: depression, self-doubt and enough unanswered introspection to make Dr. Drew huff a can of paint. As for writer’s block, well, she’s the only mistress I’ve ever had … a frigid bitch who moves in and makes me pay for all the nights the Muse had her way with me. I’ll run that hag off soon enough, but probably never for good. (Perhaps I should file for a restraining order.)

And career fatigue! Does twenty three years of riding around with gear in the rear even qualify as a career? Did Dr. Seuss take over the last half of that sentence? Is this thing even on? You show me a person who’s slept, stepped and crept through as many deadlines as I have who doesn‘t have career fatigue and I’ll show you an unfeeling schlub with a musty ball of gaffer’s tape where his shriveled little heart used to be. Career fatigue, PFFT! I got three week old camera batteries with more wear and tear on ’em than the occupational distress I’ve shared with you people! I have not yet begun to bitch! So bring it on, snarky office mate! Take your best shot, creepy delicatessen lady! And you there, with the badly-wrapped sat truck and feigned concern for my well-being – come at me, bro’! I’ll turn your latest mistake into Top Ten fodder, get plugged by News Blues in the process and STILL have to drag some beauty queen into the abyss tomorrow morning!  And as for that whole blogging phase I went through….

I’ll get back to it eventually.