Decisions, Decisions

We have a new car. Buying it was a difficult decision, one a long time in the making. We decided for no real reason, or rather, for "squishy" reasons. We still need two cars. One of ours was 17 years old (the other is 8). Roy and I connected with a particular sales person who sold a particular kind of car we already knew we wanted. Et cetera.

Similarly, I will no longer be blogging here. Quitting was a difficult decision, one a long time in the making. The reasons are similarly squishy. Nothing horrible has happened. It's just time.

So of course I will now squish about those reasons.

One reason for quitting is that I sometimes feel, walking into a bookstore or surfing along the dewy strands of the Interwebs (to mix metaphors), as if people are clutching at my lapels (more mixture, more metaphors!), begging me to listen to their stories.

I am suffering a surfeit of memoir, a plethora of personal essay.

Actually, that last isn't quite right. I do like to read personal essays. But I am ready for them to be less personal and more essay. I'm very happy for a personal thread to guide me through a topic. I just want more emphasis on the topic and less on the feelings and impressions of the writer.

All of which is a tad hypocritical, since I have written very personal essays and can't promise I'll stop. Someday, a subject will capture my attention, and when I'm ready to consider it in the light of learning, I will. However, given that blogs are a form of personal essay, I can at least stop writing this one, which is more personal and less essay. As it happens, my writing for the foreseeable future will be less essay-ish and more fict-ish (and work-ish).

So the bigger reason for quitting is that others have far more learned things to say than I do about Canada as seen through the eyes of the U.S. and/or Americans (and sometimes vice versa). In the next month or so, I expect to be tidying up in here a little, and I'll include links to some of those people who are doing those "real" things, like collecting and analyzing accents and doing real research into the nuances of that relationship.

It's been an interesting adventure. I am aware that some semi-public mock has been made of me and my opinions. That's unsurprising, given that putting an opinion into a public space like a blog invites responses, of which mock is one form.

But it's also completely surprising, because really, who cares what I think? In the words of The West Wing's Toby Ziegler, "I'm just the guy who does the thing." (Another metaphor: I have apparently run out of pie!)

The point: I am not an expert. Not even a representative opinion. Just a writer. A sometimes cranky fly on the wall. (Stopping with the metaphors now.)

Far more important than all that is this: I am most grateful for those who have engaged me (in real life, given that I am the kind of person who doesn't allow comments here) in discussions about everything from "Of course it's pronounced "ash-phalt"; what are you talking about?" to the wistful "Really? they don't think about us? Not even a little bit?"

I am still find-able. I have a website. I am on Facebook.

In closing: Thank you, everyone. See you across the border.