The last time I published a post here it was June of 2016. A year and a half ago. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t written anything this year.
You see, I’ve gotten quite political in the past 18 months. Since the Republican Party allowed the least qualified and least competent person to take their nomination, and the party as a whole basically gave up any semblance of normal order in favor of trashing the system for the benefit of the few in what appears to be an attempt to cash out before the revolution. And not only was he nominated, but he rode a tide of white anxiety to the White House. And now “Everything is terrible.”
That’s hyperbole. Things are bad for lots of people, and the current administration appears dead set on making things worse. But here I am, an educated, white male who managed to get the worst of his past (debt) behind him before someone started pulling up all the ladders, and I’m okay, and I’m probably going to keep being okay for a while.
To that end, I have political feelings. And I come here sometimes to write them out. And then I edit them. And then I edit them some more. And I wonder if a person who has thus far been immune to the effects of what is happening should be speaking. I probably shouldn’t. I should probably use my voice to say “Hey! Check out this person over here!” And I try. I share things on social media. Which is just about the least that a person can possibly do. It’s only slightly above “raising awareness” for things like cancer and other illnesses. They don’t need awareness, they need money.
I digress. So I have all of these drafts. These things I have written and edited and abandoned. What do I do with these? Clearly when I sit down to write, I write these things, but my lack of doing anything with them has lead to me writing less and less. Should I publish them? Even if some of them are likely misguided attempts to help?
This is what I think of as the year winds down. Just a couple days left and 2017 will be history.
As 2018 nears, I feel that I need a theme, one to be the driving focus of all things, under which all the smaller tasks will fall. I think that theme will be: Do better.