Editor’s Note: On Loneliness

When I first thought of adding editor’s notes to BULL I anticipated that writing this intro to our upcoming “Lonesome Issue” would be easy.  It is not.  Most worthwhile writing is never easy, though the same could be said for that which is not worthwhile too, and as to where this falls on the spectrum… we’ll see.  But composing this note on loneliness is made especially difficult now, given that the past two weeks have brought me more daily interaction with people than I’ve had in the past two years.

You may know that BULL is currently in the throes of a contest, one that takes place on everyone’s favorite social network. It is there that I’ve been living and lobbying for support and votes throughout much of every day.  While it has been a welcome means of procrastinating this essay, now that the time has come I must say it’s hard to write on loneliness while exchanging daily messages with thirty some-odd people.  Granted, these messages are brief and contest-based: a vote here, a vote there, everyone watching and willing their ticker to go up. But there is an almost subliminal effect in receiving these notes and seeing these familiar faces every day, even if that note is really just a number, and even though that face is just a profile picture. Because the fact is that there are people behind those pictures, and they are people I would never have had the occasion to “meet” if not for this strange, addictive, and overall infectious effort we’re all involved in. 

I’ve never really understood how relationships can be made online, but over the course of this Facebook fiasco I think I’m starting to.  It begins with repetition, which gives way to a slightly more sincere familiarity, and finally lends an odd sense that you can really count on someone to be there, wherever there may be on the web.  The whole thing has even made me question the scare-quotes I tend to put around the concept of “meeting” someone online. I give ‘em a year more, at the most.

Ah, forget it.  They’re ugly.  They’re gone.

BULL was begun in large part as a means of meeting people, and as such, preventing loneliness. There were other, more professional reasons touched on here, but personally, in January of 2009 I was facing a protracted period of solitude in which nearly everyone I knew had left town, my neighbor and closest remaining friend had died, and I was expecting my first child, who I would care for while my wife started a new job. I knew some kind of interactive outlet would be necessary or I’d go off my homebound, bottle-feeding rocker. What I sought to do was meet other writers, read and respond thoughtfully to their writing, work closely with them on their stories and present those stories to a kindred audience.

Looking back, well, it worked.  2 years, 8 generous volunteers, 57 authors, a few thousand submissions and all you readers later, we’ve come to this: the first time I feel compelled to get as sappy as I can in an editor’s note.  All I really want to say here is this: I do appreciate everyone BULL has ever put me in contact with.  It’s because of you that I’ve managed to keep more marbles than I’ve lost. 

Not so for some of these fellas in the Lonesome Issue.  Our offering this season is populated by men going it alone, and examines how they deal with it and what it drives them to.  Next week we’re privileged to kick it off with a fine story by BULL’s very first author and perennial movie reviewer, Josh Peterson.  From there we’ll see the springtime horns full of work by Chad Simpson, Paul Weidknecht, Jacob White, and Todd McKie. As this is the first issue prepared in advance, and arranged with a concrete theme in mind, I’m happy to feature a broad span of sentiment—stories wry and comic, abstract, heartbreaking as well as heartwarming.  It all starts next week.  We’ll see you then.

— JH

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