Before this blog I would occasionally write a long e-letter to my friends updating my current state of existence. Nobody asked for it and in one case with a close friend of mine who is a busy lawyer, I was specifically asked to stop doing it! I ignored him and still send to his ‘spam filter’ instead.

Still, the e-mail letter seemed like a friendly thing to do and it helped keep the e-mail tubes well-lubricated even if some of them were just: “Please remove my name from your list” messages.

I’m not fat. I just have thick skin.

But even amongst the still-friendly, they were not always well received. “Geez, Dave, got your e-mail. Pretty long. Read some of it but decided to call you instead. I’m worried. What were you saying in that diatribe anyway? By the way, how’s Sal? The dogs? Did you know your last missive on the China Monologues was 54 pages?

So, I got the message and made them shorter. But that didn’t always work either. “Hey, Dave, got your e-mail. Didn’t say enough. Which is a good thing, actually. What’s up with (fill in the blank) and when you comin’ down? I’ll probably be out of town then.”

So then I figured I’d keep it short but frequent by way of a blog. “That oughta keep ’em happy!”

My father in law told me he wasn’t happy.

“When you wrote the long e-mails, I would print them out and pretend they were like personal letters, ya know? But then you went all ‘sound bite’ on me and we just get these snippets. Doesn’t feel as personal. No intimacy. Where’s the love, man?” (OK, I am playing a bit fast and loose with my 87 year-old father-in-law’s steeped-in-Stilton, British-ships-captain way of speaking but you get the idea).

The point: seems size has something to do with it after all. Too short seems less than satisfying and too long seems a bit tedious. Hard to get it just right. (double entendres intended)

It is hard to keep even some of the people happy all of the time. So I am hoping to just keep some of the people happy some of the time. Push comes to shove – I’ll accept just one of the people happy enough to stick around (Sal) most of the time.

And, if politics is anything to go by, I only need 40% of the people onside once every four years. And bald-faced, non-stop lying will do that for you it seems.

Maybe I am in the wrong line of business………………..?