When I read other peoples' blogs, there's inevitably a stage when they run out of steam. The reasons are various; changed circumstances, the effort involved in writing something novel each day / week, a lack of new ideas or the erosion of the novelty of it all.

None of that is the case for me.

Whether you enjoy reading this blog or not, I, your author, have much pleasure in its production and in the personal intricacies of deciding what to write about and what to brush under the carpet.

But my family have managed, successfully, to wear away at my confidence by expressing their discomfort about this web site as a whole, and this blog in particular. Their concerns are mostly born of ignorance, as they haven't really been reading what I wrote. They just don't like being associated with me in a public space - they feel I'm being far too revealing about personal matters. Frankly, they're also worried about people who know them finding out "too much about me" (guess what).

For me, this web site has been an exercise in openness and I have thought through the personal issues of such transparency. Nevertheless, their views are legitimate and, however much I rail against the effective self-censorship that imposes, I have lost the heart to argue.

I always used to believe that "blood is thicker than water" and have tried always to put my family first. I don't feel that any more. My family enjoys practising a combination of love and cruelty, placing an interminable, relentless obligation on me as a never-ending tribute owed to the bloodline from which I sprung. I love them and hate them, with an intimacy and minuteness that can only be shared within a family. We know of all each others' strengths and faults, all the emotional pressure points and use them on one another relentlessly and without mercy.

As the recipient of this family sadism in respect of this web site, I've only two choices; to plough on, believing in the reasonableness of what I'm doing, or to give up. I've chosen the latter, because I've lost the will to fight them. I don't know where this will end, because I do truly love them with an intensity that I can not rationalise. But this may simply be a symptom of the well-known phenomenon of the captive's dependency and "love" for his tormentors.

All of this comes at a time in my life when I'm feeling less certain about some of the other decisions I've made. So all in all, it's better to retreat a bit into my shell for a while.

"And he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land".

Thank you for reading JustNathan. You never know, I may be back.