Wow. 4 years, huh? Well. I, uh… Have been… Busy?

Another dog to go with Dog 1 and Cat 1; 3 different jobs; improving & maintaining a marriage; improving & selling a house; purchasing a house in a city we didn’t live in; conceiving then protecting and raising a now-2.5-year-old daughter; moving from Cincinnati to Columbus.

I’ve been busy. Yeah!

And while that’s all certainly true, I also had a cheap, quick & dirty outlet for other thoughts. Facebook had me in its clutches, and I succumbed to the TL;DR-ness of the second decade of the 21st Century in Amurika. It was easy to just throw something up on the FB and wait – Pavlovian – for the likes and comments to roll in.

It wasn’t productive for me, really, or creative in any sense. I got tired of not fleshing out ideas. And if I did, I got tired of writing things longer than a sentence and having people skim it then post a comment or question that – had they actually read the damn thing – would have been addressed by my initial post.

I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle everyone who TL;DR’d me.

“Oh, I’m sorry – you follow me on Facebook because you like me or we’re friends or something, and a thing I took the time to not just write but craft into something cogent and important (to me at least) takes 30 seconds longer for you to read than you’d like it to? You’re clearly in a rush so I’ll skip to the end: Go Fuck Yourself.”

But then. But then.

#Ferguson happened. And #EricGarner. And #TamirWright. And #LeelahAlcorn.

And on and on and on and on.

That’s when I got tired of the vitriol, the trolling, and the willful disregard for facts or science or reason or logic. Forgive me for being a traditionalist, but I prefer for my debates and antagonism to take place in person, thanks.

Forgive my desire for courtesy, respect, honesty, and authenticity. Forgive my longing for well-crafted discourse using appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation, and rhetorical style.

I will NOT, however, apologize for my Oxford Comma.

So I quit Facebook on New Years Day. I’ll keep my account so I can look things up for professional purposes and so my wife can tag me in photos for the sake of our extended families. Otherwise, I’m going to use this and Twitter as my outlets/info-gathering social media devices. There’s a Twitter feed on the right side of the main page if you want to see what’s up over there: you can always follow me @wapratt.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into the long form game. I hope you’ll join me from time to time.