Update on Frustration (see post below):

I have received a number of emails from readers who felt I was directing my concerns at them.

Naturally, the ones who worried about this were NOT the ones I was frustrated with.

Remember: I have grown incredibly fond of those who correspond with me about my blog. The conversation is rich and there is, indeed, a dialogue.

I am also fond of the silent reader (this is YOU, my most recent emailier!) -- the person who tracks my blog and becomes taken with it so that they come to know me, even as I do not know them at all. I am such a reader myself. There are about five people whose lives I track through their blogs even though I have never commented on them nor written to them. I don't have the time nor inclination to comment every day or even every week on all the blogs I read.

So who is the target of my "Frustration" post? People who are supposedly near and dear to me but who are content to catch my posts occasionally as a substitute for real contact. And when they do catch it, they never engage me about it. They are like maggots, feasting on me, their fallen one. Well, okay, maybe not maggots, maybe not even day-old toast, but certainly they are the ones who make me feel small and insignificant -- worth only a click, nary a private word.