Anyone still out there?Re-entering cyberspace, I think, might be more challenging than entering it the first time. Technically though, I never really left, going from the  Chicago Tribune to my blog, which kept me sane after being laid off from the Tribune, to ESPNChicago.com, which saved me.

I began my blog in the weepy hours after being pushed out by the Tribune last April and kept writing as I stopped crying and started to see the hope and humor again, through my first months with ESPN. And then I stopped.I still do not know exactly why I stopped. But I am flattered by the handful of you not including those directly related to me, who noticed. I hope you find me again. And though I can’t promise anything, I hope not to take a three-and-half month break again.

For a while, I know I felt that if I was not doing something productive every waking hour that I was a slug and would never be gainfully employed again. Then, when I was gainfully employed again, I discovered the utter sense of comfort I got from taking a few hours off and not feeling guilty.At about that time, I also re-discovered our couch in the family room and how much I loved it – and the furry purple blanket my daughter Amanda brought home a few years ago as one of the truly great bat mitzvah giveaways. And then I remembered why my husband rarely rents movies as I drifted off to sleep each night, a deep, almost drugged-like state in which I could hear myself snoring but I could not do a thing about it.

It also was then that I couldn’t imagine how I would ever find the time and energy to write a blog again.But I did miss it.  Like an old friend who you stop calling for no particular reason, then a few weeks turn into months and you reach that uncomfortable stage when you’re almost afraid to call, not remembering who called last and if it’s your fault so much time has passed, I am hoping that as I do start again, I will find that my friend(s) are still there for me.Writing columns again on a regular basis for ESPN has been a joy I thought I might never experience again. I do it now with a light-heartedness, even for the heavy subjects, I have not had in a very long time. Maybe it’s because I am no longer under strict space or time restrictions. Maybe it’s just because it’s a terrific positive atmosphere. Or maybe it’s because no one really writes to me anymore.There is no e-mail address at the bottom of my columns and I have made no effort to correct that. While I have always loved hearing from readers, even critical responses, the advent of blogs and the increase in Internet traffic has lent itself to people who can spontaneously reply from their desks – or dark caves, as the case may be  — anonymously, of course, and with spewings of racism, sexism and just general hatred that I really grew tired of reading.I just figured I’d cut down on that a little and it seems to have worked and I feel much better. In fact, e-mails like the one I got this morning in response to my [U.S. Olympic speedskater] Shani Davis column calling me a “barren lesbian freak” hardly ever happen anymore. So things are great.But I do love hearing from people who read my blogs, particularly since they seem only to be nice, normal, literate people who would never think of calling a writer a “barren, lesbian freak” even if somehow that was an appropriate response.The other thing is that I find I am talking to myself much too much without a blog, particularly in the shower when I am a literary savant, every story flowing through my brain with just the right touches of humor. Of course, by the blow-drying stage, I’ve lost it. But where else but here can I talk about Amanda’s turnabout dance (I called it the “Sadie Hawkins dance” recently and she looked at me as if I was wearing a bonnet and hoop skirt), my continued eating problems (I bought a Valentine’s Day cookie cake as if we were having a party – we’re not. Cake is now gone), my 11-year-old son suddenly caring how his hair looks (I can cry), the new Superdawg grand opening (like a drive-thru bar mitzvah), and many funny facets of my life that have been lost forever in this three-and-a-half-month black hole.So I’ll be back, promise.  

I went back to the Tribune Tower Sunday morning, for the first time since being axed.

I had been invited to be a guest of Rick Kogan’s on his weekly WGN radio show, “Sunday Papers” and he asked me to come to the studio, which is inside the Tower.

My husband Rick came with me because it was Father’s Day and what man doesn’t want to wake up at 6 a.m. on the Sunday of Father’s Day and drive his wife downtown?

As we were walking in, I remarked how stupid it was that I hadn’t remembered to bring in my Tribune-issue laptop and cell phone, since they had to be returned. But Rick told me he had already returned them for me, several weeks before.

I had absolutely no idea, which may give you some indication of how tight a rein I keep on my very important to-do list and valuable equipment that doesn’t belong to me. My husband obviously knew I could not bear the thought of stepping foot in the place, so much so that he quietly just did it for me, meeting someone from the sports department in the lobby to hand over the stuff.

So kind a gesture was it, that if it had been Mother’s Day rather than Father’s Day, this would have sufficed as a present.

I have written about this lobby before. I had never been one to necessarily buy into the arrogant notion that everything attached to the great Tribune edifice was sacred and even if I did then, I think it’s pretty safe to say I don’t now.

But the building is well, I can’t help it, it’s just special. Even if I hadn’t worked there, I would have taken my children there to see the fragments stuck into the outside of the building from such historically significant places as the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall and Abraham Lincoln’s original tomb.

But inside is where I stood agape the first time I ventured in as a college student, saw the famous quotations describing the ideals of a free press etched into the walls, and grew dizzy as I spun around and around to read each one.

The Hall of Inscriptions, it’s called.  

I read them over and over. I might have even tried to memorize them. And I felt important, like I was a part of this scared trust, even as a kid just starting out.

Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.Lord Macaulay

Again and again as I walked through the lobby over the years, I would read that quote and the others. It’s hard not to as they loom over you. And like most sportswriters, I wasn’t in the building all that much over the years, which only heightened the experience when I walked through the front doors.

But strangely, I never became all that comfortable there, like it was my building, my place. I felt lucky that I got to work there, but also intimidated by the surroundings as if I was never dressed quite well enough or that one day someone might tap me on the shoulder and test me on the quotations. Like Col. McCormick himself was looking down and might swat me away at any given moment.

Newspapers are the sentinels of the liberties of our country.  Benjamin Rush

I still have my employee ID in my wallet, for some reason. I had it there Sunday, when I signed in as a visitor. I realized afterward that I never looked up while I was there, even while waiting for Rick Kogan’s producer to come out and bring us into the studio.

Maybe I didn’t want to get those familiar goose bumps. Maybe I didn’t want to know what it was like not to feel lucky I got to work there.

But here’s the funny part. I wasn’t intimidated. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, had bad hair and I felt OK, familiar, kind of like this was my place. I know every inch of that lobby.  I know all the secret back ways up to the newsroom. How many times did I bring my kids up those elevators to the fourth floor, where Wendell buzzed them in and they knew where my mailbox was and where to go to visit Rose, our former sports department secretary, and to see Holly’s Pez dispenser collection?

I’m glad I went.

I’ll probably never go back.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Flannery O’Connor/files/0/9/0/8/7/188681-178090/isaacson.mp3″>The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan – 06/21/09