Last November, I said I’d spend this year learning to invest and play the guitar. And while I’ve successfully saved and invested, my memory of notes and chords has yet to stick in the weeks between the moments I’ve taken my guitar from its case.

After a euphoric 26, 27 so far has been a bit of a grind: while my new employer’s bureaucratic expansion and reshuffling has not diminished the pleasure I take in my work, last semester, I felt little traction with my academic pursuits, my health was inconsistent, creative output stalled.

Whither those mixes in progress, my untended portfolio, my old pencils? They’re everywhere but my fingertips.

And it occurred to me not long ago that I didn’t send a postcard in 2009, and in the year since I last travelled, I have misplaced my mailing list. In advance of a slate of new destinations in 2010 (Houston to meet Christina’s family, Italy and Mexico in the summer – exurbs and romance), if you derive joy from receiving landscape photos and gaudily filtered type on 4″ × 6″ cardstock via snail mail, let me know the best address where I can make your day.

Between travels, I’ll be making an effort to write here with greater frequency. Though I may only compose a few sentences at a stretch, I need to practice for postcards, need to reestablish my flow – the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that I exist.

And I need to remember I have a guitar and a promise to keep, and my fingertips have to make some undesirable noise before I can rock out again. Bear with me.