Our internet is out at home. I assume this means that the satellite that provides our connection was eaten by a star eel, but I’m no technician. Unfortunately, that means that I was unable to do job searches today, and can’t watch a few episodes of Arrested Development tonight. Instead I went grocery shopping, watched some TV and spent some time hanging out with the RoomLord and RoomLady upstairs.

Since I had the genius idea of keeping my writing work in the cloud, I also have been prevented from being productive on that front, not that I’ve been too motivated lately. Mostly, it was a Wednesday spent in sponge mode. I didn’t move forward at all.

At midnight, with no cybernets back yet, I went out or a drive with my current audiobook, Dave Saderis’s Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. I’m about 90% of the way through the book, and at the closing section entitled “Etc…” The entire section of the book is dedicated to short pieces that he says were put there so that high school students could use them in Forensics tournaments. You see, for the Prose Interpretation event the piece must appear in a work with an ISBN. I thought it was awfully cool of him to think of things like that. His work appears in a lot of newspapers and magazines, so it’s not always available for competition.

I have a background in Forensics. I competed through most of High School. My older brother and sister also competed. My Sister-in-Law still coaches it, and her kids are getting ready for Nationals this year. It is part of our family. It comes up, and it’s always around.

I’ve never considered that if I made it as a writer that someone might one day perform something I’d written. I was thinking about that, and how I figured even if a miracle happened and I did become a famous author it would never happen, when I got a DM on twitter.

That’s a Direct Message, like a text. Just in case you were wondering.

The message came from a reader who wanted me to know that my last couple of posts had really resonated with her.

I was floored. I have a fairly decent sense that there are a handful of people who read my blog and enjoy it. I have an aunt and cousins who read to see how crazy I’ve gotten. I think they look at me as the wacky member of the family, the one everyone is always guessing to see just what he’ll do next. I’m not complaining. In a family as huge and loving as mine, being the wacky free-spirit is just fine with me. It comes with love and acceptence.

Then of course, there are a few friends I’ve met through the blog that read pretty regularly. They are the ones I generally think of as my audience, and they’re oodles and oodles of encuragement. People that are trying, like I am, to do this and make a name or a difference. They are my circle of creators. The ExPats to my Hemmingway, if you will.

Of course, as always, there are my parents, endless pools of wisdom and insight. Permenant fans, if you will.

This DM came from a tweep that I interact with on occasion, and I hope I’m not offending her by saying this, but we’re more twitter aquaintences than twitter homies.

But that is what made her message, and the fact that she had taken the time to send it, mean so much to me. Something I wrote; something I’m going through; resonated with her.

I’m not going to lie and say that all of my fears and doubts have been burned away forever. I’m not going to say that her message has shone a light into the darkness of my soul and cast out my inner turmoil.

For tonight, though, it has lifted a weight off of me. It has helped me accept and remember that even if I never amount to anything else, there are people out in the world that can connect to my words. There are people that get something from my doing this.

It feels good to be a part of something, even if it just a sense of understanding between two relative strangers in a sea of seven billion souls.

There is a wonderful warm power in that.

Thank You for sharing it with me.

-MB

Tags: connection, thankfulness, understanding