It's been almost two years since I scuttled my blog over at livejournal.com. It simply got too much. It interfered with my work, my other interests, kept me from leaving my appartment even when the weather was fine, and when I did manage to step outside, I was already composing an entry about that particular adventure. The post about the walk in the Schönbrunn palace garden, the absurd emu enclosure there, and something Mila Jovovich said in 'The Fifth Element' was an instant classic, for example. On LJ, I had early adopter status (no. twelve and thousand and something as compared to two million users or more at present) and was considered an all-around interesting  guy.

Wow! Here's this guy from Central Europe writing in English interspersed with German & Czech, bipolar ("Cool!"), 2nd degree Shotokan karate black belt & instructor, college-trained translator, well-travelled (not really), kinda sorta Green/leftist, immaginative story-teller, given to Kerouac-style raving after a beer or two (but still fascinating, ya know!), etc., etc. It would be nice to say that I've left all that behind but I haven't really. I'm still a recovering blogging fiend. This is just a relapse, I promise. I can give it up any time I like, so there. I'll keep it short and concise, see if I don't. Except when getting down to do some really serious procrastination, of course. Uhm.

Anyway, the reason why I joined this place is my Dad's condition. He suffers from Restless Legs Syndrome, "a poorly understood and often misdiagnosed disorder" according to the Wikipedia entry. In fact, it took a whole bevy of doctors years to find what exactly was wrong with him. Sounds familiar, huh? He doesn't know anything about computers or the internet, so I did some research for him, copied and printed out what I found & sent it to him. Really made him happy, especially the posts in the self-help forums because they were tangible proof for him that he wasn't alone in this. It took me some time until I finally thought, "I got all the facilities I need for connecting with crazies all over the world, so why don't I just go ahead and do it?" It was the Wiki entry on BP that finally brought me here, and from what I've read here so far, it's been a good decision.

Registering here yesterday kicked me straight into mild hypomania though. It didn't really surprise me (also felt kinda good, after this long depressive spell). There is so much I want to write about, so much I've never been able to explain to like-minded souls... but there's always the danger that my LJ mania will be simply replaced by another sort of blogging addiction. Here's a guy who's living alone, who works from home, whose only social contacts are the guys & girls from the dojo, his parents, and his doc, whose art perpetration weapon of choice is language and who wants to be popular like everybody else. Ok, not like everybody else. Some sort of hermit superstar. Howard Hughs. Marlene Dietrich. Elvis late in his life. And a little grey mouse behind the door when I'm not feeling so well.

 Please feel free to comment. I don't even know if playing chat-like 'comment ping pong' here is feasible, with hundreds of comments for a single controversial post (usually about sex or religion, and I'm not even talking about trolls or flame wars) - my favorite LJ vice. Don't expect answers every time because I might just be able to sign off even when feeling too inspired for my own good, or go into recluse mode on bad days. Enjoy, fellow high & low fliers.