I’ve been struggling for some weeks or maybe months now with more than usual angst about the world, about blogging, and about how I relate to all that. I don’t think I have ever published something so personal and revealing as a blog post before, but somehow I feel that I should now. It just feels relevant. I hope I’m right about that.
I know that something is changing. I can feel it pulling at me. That tug inside of me — I’ve felt it before.
I don’t want to blog anymore. That’s an expression of a feeling, not an announcement. What I mean is, I have more and more days when I just don’t feel like blogging, and if I do, much of the time I have to force myself.
I feel burned out on blogging. That what’s I tell myself. Life is too depressing. The world is too depressing. Nothing ever changes. I’m writing about the same things — the same issues, problems, crises, horrors — all the time. Endless war. Endless rationalizations for endless war. Broken promises. Trust betrayed. The same arguments for staying in Afghanistan, for escalating in Afghanistan, from the same people who made the same arguments for staying in Iraq and for escalating in Iraq. Success is evidence of success. Failure is evidence of success. The left accuses the right; the right accuses the left. Both sides do it. Everyone’s to blame. No, one side does it more. Your side does it more. No, your side does it more. False equivalence, tribalism, circling the wagons, protecting our little pieces of territory against each other like alley cats. Demands for personal responsibility from people who would not dream of taking personal responsibility for anything. No, I meant they should take personal responsibility, not us. Facts, reality, truth meaning nothing anymore — or at least, meaning far less than getting the last word and winning the argument. If you have to lie, distort, and mislead to win the argument, that’s what you gotta do. Bald-faced, shameless lies told without even a pretense of backing them up. Judgments, assertions, conclusions, sweeping generalizations, flat, two-dimensional, un-nuanced claims outside of and divorced from any context. Casual cruelty. Complex issues reduced to platitudes and slogans. Do it to your brother before he does it to you. People who cannot tolerate or understand human frailty. People who think so literally, who take literal meaning from metaphorical or figurative language. People who cannot read between the lines, who cannot intuit what is not said, or see shades of meaning, layers of meaning. People who are just completely and utterly incapable of abstract thinking. Presumably educated adults who do not have the most basic critical thinking skills. People who cannot hold an ugly terrible truth in their minds without trying to qualify it. Yes, there is ugliness even in the most beautiful places, and there is beauty even in the ugliest places — but a flower growing out of a crack in the cement at Auschwitz does not alter the truth of what Auschwitz is. People who lack the ability to empathize, to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, to imagine what the interiors of other people’s existences might look like — and don’t even feel the need to try.
I have been thinking about and writing about these things for years and I’ve been feeling lately like I can’t anymore. Or don’t want to, maybe. I mean, if nothing ever changes, if my words can’t make a difference or move the boulder even a fraction of an inch, then what is the point? Just for my own gratification?
I’ve been sleeping a lot lately — like 12 to 18 hours a day, although not in a consistent pattern. When I’m not sleeping, what I most want to do is read, and watch the infinite variety of crime scene investigation and law enforcement and lawyer shows on television. Well, on CBS, which is the only channel I get reception on, without cable.
This, too, shall pass, my father used to say. Maybe. But when it does, something new will reveal itself to me. Not in the world — in my life. Maybe this is just another phase of my life that’s ending, and I just have to wait to find out what comes next.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.