Several versions of the following email have sauntered into my Inbox over the past few weeks:

Dear O/Melissa,

I have read and enjoyed your blog for months. However, I feel the need to tell you that ever since you quit your job and revealed your identity, your blog has sucked. Please bring it back to the way it was before. Thank you.

One of the best things about having a blog: You can always rely on complete strangers to inform you exactly why and how much you suck. I could write some mock-indignant response defending myself, filled with witticisms marinated in sarcasm. But I won’t, for the simple reason that it would be a crock of shit. These readers are, to a certain extent, entirely correct. The blog has changed since I left my job as a law firm associate – this much was inevitable. It lacks the same intensity, because it no longer serves as an outlet for venting the day’s or week’s frustrations. Are ridiculous things still happening? Certainly, and I plan to write about them. But the urgency and desperation aren’t always there. For that, I offer no apologies – I could write a week of posts alone on the potential for bloggers, or any autobiographical writers, to deliberately create drama and misery in their lives simply as fodder for their writing. Everyone has the right to scuttle into a nook and be boring for a little while.

Also, the loss of anonymity changes things whether I like it or not. While I enjoy the new challenge of sidestepping mines, I realize that the stakes of blogging are higher. Real people are involved, and while I’ve never been afraid of stepping on toes, I’m not out to embarrass or alienate everyone who interacts with me. Do I want to write about my friend’s tough decision to come out of the closet at his firm, or my recent foray into Boyfriend’s porn stash? Of course. But it’s no longer exclusively my decision to make (BF wants me to run the post by him first).

That being said, I admit I’ve dropped the ball on posting while I’ve been holed up working on the manuscript. I promise it’s not permanent. Bear with me.