Seven months of hibernation.

It has been a long seven months of NO blogging. A lot happened in this time hence there was just no time to write. In this period a lot took place; new job, new born baby, new hobbies (guitar) and a lot of soul searching (Yes I also have those moments..."Who am I in the universe").

Fatherhood has been the most rewarding of all my pre-occupations and it remains by far the only pursuit which has provided me with a sense of satisfaction and hope. A lot of work is still needed in the other aspects of my life. My passion for reading never really suffered as much as the writing passion. Between a list of religious books that I am currently reading (primarily for my Masterguide training), I still managed to indulge in some of the most wonderful books (mostly during December holidays) like Black Diamond by Zakes Mda, The Democratic Moment by Xolela Mangcu, Native Nostalgia by Jacob Dlamini, Famished Road by Ben Okri, Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. Oh what an enthralling journey.

Enough about myself, let us talk about ThinkingAloud now. Even though I did not blog for such a long time, I did manage to share some thoughts with friends on Facebook. The discussions on Facebook are very interesting in that you interact with people you already know (mostly) and their views vary from being personal to insanely subjective or just polite. The status updates tend to also be very short and sometimes without any deep analysis. Therefore the discussions can veer off the topic very quickly but nevertheless the FB discussions remain very informative.

What I missed about blogging is the fact that one can expect a lot of varied responses from all over the world and "faceless" readers. The views expressed are generally point blank honest. But blogging requires time and thought, much more than it is required on Facebook. Twitter just did not work for me. I use Twitter simply to read the links that other people post, I hardly ever tweet myself. I also do have followers on Twitter that are mostly expecting work related tweets, not my midnight ramblings about SA politics. What is also interesting is that a lot of the blog feedback is private i.e. people who want to engage but not necessarily publish their interaction to the whole world. This happens does happen on FB as well.

So does this blog signal the return of ThinkingAloud (yet again)? Let us take it one day at a time. I certainly would like to write more frequently and I would like to bring back ThinkingAloud to it infamous heights. So between changing nappies at night I will attempt to sneak in a blog or three each week. But don't hold me to it, stuff happens.