Interruption

I won't be posting to the blog in the next month or so.
I'm leaving for Peru tomorrow, and I won't be back at my desk until the end of October.
I intend to take notes, for myself but also with an eye to adding to the blog when we return.
It's been important to me to express my feelings in writing and share them with friends and, possibly, strangers. Writing for me is a means of clarification and self-control.
It's forced me to tread a thin line between what's too personal and private to expose to the world and what's too general to be of interest.
The writer's task is to bring news. If you don't learn anything new from what you're reading, you needn't bother reading at all. Unless you are reading to be comforted and to have your sentiments and ideas reinforced.
All writing is a kind of journalism. That's why "journal" is a near synonym for "diary."
The journalist runs out in pursuit of stories.
The diarist records the stories that have become part of his or her life.
The author of fiction makes the stories up, or twists life stories into barely recognizable forms, in a quest for a different kind of news.
The story I've been exploring here is not one that anyone would ever choose to pursue. You might say that I've been writing about it to keep it from pursuing me.
The journalist's task is to invade other people's privacy and expose what they'd rather hide.
I'm trying to invade only my own privacy here, only to expose what might be meaningful or helpful to readers, and to avoid the need for saying the same thing over and over again in individual letters to friends. I'm hiding quite a bit, don't worry.
But here's something personal:
Yesterday, Shabbat, I was at the lowest ebb that I remember since Asher's disappearance. Every bit of energy had seeped out of me. I had the feeling that every decision I had ever made in my life - from the time I was thirteen and chose to remain at my small private high school instead of applying for Music and Art or Bronx Science, to my choice of college, to my choice of a major in college, on and on through my life - was part of a series of stupid errors based on inauthentic values and insufficient self-knowledge.
I am experienced enough to realize that this was only a mood, probably a reflection of physical fatigue as much as anything else. I also realize that my emotions are still unsteady and an unreliable basis for any serious decision - not that I have any serious decision on the horizon to make. But would such a decision be based on authentic values and sufficient self-knowledge now, as I approach my sixty-fourth birthday?
I'm not fully aware of everything that's seething inside me as I prepare for this trip, plan to pack, buy the last minute things, take care of arrangments that have to be made. It's all lurking just out of sight. But I know it's there - otherwise why would I have stayed up till after one last night, watching comedy shorts on Youtube?