I apologize for the relative mundanity on this page lately. I’m sort of enjoying my mundane life. Well, that and the really juicy stuff isn’t fit for internet consumption. If you’re really curious about what goes on behind the scenes, you’ll have to email.

That being said, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to write. Andrew and I got to talking last night about how the joy and pain of workign with a magazines is the readership. Yes, you can develop a rapport with them, you can feel the love bounce back and forth (as I wrote about in my last Note From Lotus, which I will post here soon), but you are ultimately catering to them. Your existence is dependent on their consumption of your “product,” and so you can’t write over their heads or else you lose them, you can encourage them to think new things, but you can’t really change them. Hopefully you love your readership, because you’re writing for them and if you love them you’ll love what you’re writing.

However, there does come a point when you want to write for yourself. Don’t get me wrong: the relationship I had with the Lotus readership was my soulfood. I thrived off the mutual adoration. I loved my sweet readers, and they sent me letters telling me how much they loved me. That’s a nice job, ya know?

Perhaps I’ve reached a time when I have things to say that ravers, on the whole, don’t care about. Did ravers really want to read about environmental economics? Did they really care about the mentoring articles? How many of them actually read the magazine instead of just eyeing the adds and photos? Perhaps it’s time to write for myself.

Wasn’t it Gertrude Stein who said “I write for myself and strangers”? I believe that was it. I’m incubating right now, getting ready to give birth to that inspirational written egg of truth I know is in here somewhere. I write to get that egg out. I write to mobilize, I write to inspire, I write to encourage, I write to enliven, and I will never write self help books. Ever. I write to keep myself alive, I write to keep others alive, I write to coax a laugh out, I write to educate. I write to learn.