One of the side effects, or "side experiences" I should say, of being a freelance musician is that you tend to spend a lot of time in other people's churches. This year, I was invited to sing with the choir of a local temple for the Jewish High Holy Days, which marks my first experience in a temple setting. The life-long Protestant in me liked it well enough, but as it turns out, I sort of missed Jesus -- much like eating a cheese pizza, it was familiar and largely satisfying, but there was something missing. Jesus is my pepperoni.

Anyhow, as I've just completed a day's worth of Yom Kippur services, I've got atonement on the brain. Not so much religious as social. You see, I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm horrible about keeping in touch with other people.

I am sorry that I didn't reply to your e-mail. Maybe I didn't return your call in a timely manner, letting it languish until you managed to catch me again later. Perhaps I was particularly remiss about sending a card or something -- I can't say for sure. But I am very sorry about it.

The fact of the matter is, I am horrible about staying in contact with people. Yes, even in light of this age of Internet togetherness, it's a struggle for me to maintain even the thinnest lines of communication. Though Facebook has been a tremendous help, I would have been completely screwed back in the days of letter writing, despite the romantic appeal that writing long, eloquent correspondence has to me. It's hard enough to remember to change my status and leave obnoxious messages on people's walls every few days.

So I spend a lot of time apologizing to people for leaving them hanging in the middle of a series of e-mails -- I get off to a good clip, then get distracted and… boom. Sometimes I send a reply several weeks to months after the fact (generally when I need something from them), and then I have to spend time saving face. Well, it's time to come to terms with it; hey, everyone -- I'm just that guy. I am someone you know who is reasonably nice to spend time with, yet will probably be a pain in the ass to keep in touch with unless you see me on a regular basis.

So again, I apologize for any inconvenience that this causes you. I assure you that I like you nonetheless; I just am rather adept at keeping to myself.

I'm not entirely sure why I have this particular issue. Let's face it, people that put themselves out on the Internet to the degree that I have can't really be classified as "private." There are a lot of things that I bring to light in some of my published writing that I might not have been inclined to share otherwise. So, I'm not necessarily all that private in that regard as I am enigmatic -- I get to control what parts of me you have access to, the frequency that information is released, and, even if I occasionally fail miserably at it, I do enjoy the idea that I can by mysterious and hard to figure out.

In our lighter moments, my wife will bemoan this part of my nature, insisting that me being born a Gemini is some kind of weird plague that she's meant to suffer through for the rest of her life. I don't really know how to reply to that, mostly because there's an eight-year-old in my head that's trying very hard not to giggle. Even in my most open and sharing of relationships, there's a tone of misdirecting attention as to be carrying on some secret behavior without notice. And frankly, I'm not even convinced that I have anything to hide. I just like the idea of being vague and mysterious to keep things exciting.

So I'm enigmatic, not private. Still with me?

As it turns out, I'm an introvert. I like spending time alone, it's reassuring to me. I may occasionally chatter at you until you're ready to slap some tape over my mouth, but these moments are the rarity when placed in context. I am perfectly comfortable with silence, and in many cases, tend to prefer it. While I love having the number of friends that I am fortunate enough to have, I find some difficulty in trying to maintain all those relationships. I tend to generally fall back to a limited number of people that represent some kind of inner circle. But at this point, a lot of people either understand that I'm wired this way and accept it, or they understand because it's a two-way kind of thing. If I were to put a number on it, I'd say that 85% of my conversations with my friend Randall start with two straight minutes of mutual apology for not calling sooner. And this is with the guy who was best man at my wedding. That’s just how we operate, and it's understood. No hard feelings involved.

So where does that leave us? Please don't stop trying to talk to me. I genuinely DO care about what you have to say and what's going on, I'm just bad about the upkeep. You might have to wait a bit until I'm at a point where I suddenly want to catch up with everyone and their mother about what's happening. In the meantime, I hope you've been paying attention here, because it might be a while before you get this much out of me again -- at least not until I feel strongly compelled to atone for more wrongdoings.