I had gone so far out on a limb with my feelings that I didn’t realize I was standing out there alone.

“You wear your blog on your sleeve.”

My dear friend Edie said this to me several months ago, during a lengthy conversation regarding the art of blogging and various blogging habits. It was not an accusatory statement, nor a negative characterization by any means. It was simply a statement of fact.

I have always blogged that way. Even way back in 2003, when I started the previous incarnation of “Curious Affairs,” I blogged that way: forever with my heart on my sleeve and sometimes probably divulging too much of my private self in such an extremely public forum, always fearless of venturing too far out on that proverbial limb. (Of course, back then I also enjoyed the luxury my blog service afforded me of being able to limit access to my entries to online acquaintances, once-trusted friends, and family members.)

Now, it’s different. Now, my entries are entirely public. Now, I try to only publish what I consider to be quality writing, with or without an air of poignancy. (Of course, the errant chat transcript still slips in now and again for posterity’s sake, but I think even those are insightful and memorable, at least to me.) Now, I offer up even more of myself, of my emotions, and of my heart, to the online world. Now, I venture even further out onto that sometimes tenuous limb.

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I should not publish in this manner. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps it would be better to not publish anything than to publish too much. As I make my way through the archive of my previous blog, selecting choice articles to migrate to “Curious Affairs,” I will stumble across an entry I managed to tap out while blind drunk on bottles of Stolichnaya during a break-up or melancholy period, and I will laugh, initially, at the humor of them. But then I ponder the sadness from which those drunken entries actually sprung, and thank whatever presence of mind I possessed at the time for at the very least not allowing me to publish them publicly.

Even now, with far more recent entries in this newer space, I will come across them, read them, and wonder, “Did I write too much? Did I divulge too much?” And sometimes, I will find myself replying, “Yes. Yes.” It’s a little disconcerting. And it’s a little frightening. And it’s a little…vulnerable.

But I cannot help it. I cannot help but put my thoughts, and, by extension, my heart, “out there.” I cannot help but be thankful that the acquisition of a swank new Pacific Blue laptop earlier this week is allowing me to return to The Blogosphere on a more consistent basis. And I cannot help but not care that it is going to take me several days in order to catch up, in order to weave the tales already begun on paper in ink, of ghost stories in Honolulu, of dream-like journeys down darkened diagonal alleys, and of getting hit by a cab in the middle of Bethel Street on a First Friday. Because by doing so I remain true to my memories, and to the tenets expressed by Lauren Bacall that now grace my blog’s redesign in order to mark a new era: “Memory is a precious commodity, not to be tampered with, not to be rejected. We have to be glad of its existence, for it keeps alive those special people — the moments, the places, the feelings.”

And because, really, I cannot write any other way than to, well, than to wear my blog, and my heart, on my sleeve.

Or, as I believe Edie concluded our conversation several months ago, “Actually, I think your blog wears you on its sleeve!”

And to that I laughed my loony lunar laugh and replied, “Let it wear me, then.”

Because it feels good to be back.

Back out on the limb.