Je ne suis pas ici de participer, je suis ici de juger

Turns out blogging takes work. 

What was easy on vacation, taking a few hours every other day to assemble a piece + some pics, seems out of reach when back in the terrarium one's real world. 

Of course it isn't, but the natural enthusiasm one has when wandering around Berlin or Paris gets tamped down somewhat on coming home, getting back to work, and dealing with inevitable minor romantic disappointments, which happened when a certain mister X cancelled out hours prior to dinner, with what appears to have been a read-between-the-lines narrative that said either I'm involved or not interested.

While I was in Paris, a comment was left on a post that basically accused me of being a flaneur. I say accused, because that's what it felt like, as in my head I'd mixed the term up with manqué, which basically means a failure at one's given profession.

Great, I was a failed blogger. And not only that, but i was a failed blogger in Paris. And the French had just the mot juste for it. 

But then she sent me the correct definition: "a disengaged and cynical voyeur on the one hand, and man of the people who enters into the life of his subjects with passion on the other."

Now we were getting somewhere. 

And further -  "a flâneur's active participation in and fascination with street life while displaying a critical attitude towards the uniformity, speed, and anonymity of modern life in the city."

Bingo.

As a guy who feels his Irish DNA coursing through him every day, there is probably a "Flaneur O'Connor" joke in all this that i can't quite locate, but it definitely feeds into the personal tag line I've been pushing these past couple years - I'm not here to participate, I'm here to judge.

Je ne suis pas ici de participer, je suis ici de juger