I feel guilty.

Not because yesterday I had that second piece of Google’s 5-year Birthday cake, not because today I had a piece of some random office person who left it in the common kitchen’s cake, not because I am ‘trying out’ one of the cashmere sweaters that I’m supposed to be selling in the trunk show by modeling it for my coworkers, not because I bought the cutest blazer today even though I’m trying to save money, not because I didn’t try and make Sullivan lose a few of his already-too-ample 22 lbs, not because I yelled at Sebastian when he tried to drink out of my bath water this morning (really, that’s just unsanitary), not because I told the all-too-touchy-feely worker at Crabtree & Evelyn that my birthday was in October so I could come up with an excuse to why I wasn’t buying the bath lotion I so desperately wanted (waiting for my birthday, you see), not because I am still so overdue on a wedding gift that it’s practically illegal to still be my friend (ok, am actually feeling a bit guilty about that one), and not even because I didn’t show up last night for an outing even though I was the one to plan it.

No, today my guilt lies deeper, lies at the very heart of the weblog community. I feel guilty because I haven’t been reading other people’s blogs.

Silly as it may sound, I used to have a routine. Get to work, wake up a bit, have the requisite caffeine, and hit my ‘regulars.’ I’d catch up on what Josh & Sarah & Heather & Sarah & Helen Jane & Cati & CW & a few others were doing. I’d catch up on what happened in their lives, where they’d been, how their pregnancies were coming along, what they were writing, how much angst they were in with this guy or that one, and feel like I’d already gotten something accomplished before I had to go and accomplish the things I really needed to accomplish for the day. Productive, see?

But lately, my life has been crazed. Rush to work. Skip lunch. Stay late. Rush home. Do this, do that, do this & that & the other. I can’t find time to pay my bills (online, no less,) so I take my to-do list home and then bring it straight back to work the next day. In a constant state of flux, things get overlooked. And the losers, lately, have been the blogs.

A major indiscretion this is not; I would never chalk this up to keeping me awake at night as other people, issues, and burning questions (as well as learning to sleep with a cast and a cat who has decided that now it’s cold he needs to sleep under the covers, with his head mere inches from my butt, which freaks me out to no end) have been causing me insomnia. Nevertheless, I feel guilty.

I wonder if they miss me.