Interference and Static

It’s been over a month since my last free-form post on whatever has been noteworthy and deeply contemplated. 6-month-olds tend to become a priority, what can I say.

This is not the only reason for the long pause, however.

It seems like there is always something to ponder – something going on in the world that could be commented upon or framed in a manner slightly different than what is the norm. Since September, it seems that the interference of these local, national, and global events has risen to a hiss of static which drowns out deliberation:

Supreme Court nominees… migrant caravans… mail bombs… violence, anger, and blame…

“You took too much man, you took too much, too much.”

Local stress is triaged to come before the external stress of what was going on elsewhere in the country and world. There was a bit of a crash – to put it bluntly: I stopped being able to give a shit. My opinions on a lot of what is/was going on have become uncomfortably jaded… and not where I would like this blog to go.

This brings me to one of the points which has been bugging me for a bit: opinions.

Is it even necessary for everyone to share their attitudes about issues every… damn… time… something new happens? From a comment I left earlier on a friends’ page:

One of the issues I have been wrestling with is the fact that, often, the smoke has not cleared before absolute statements are being issued and recirculated before any investigation has even been started.
Outrage…
Accusation…
Emotion…
…Which leads to the inevitable politicization/polarization without solid facts.

I cringe when I see it, and I start to lose faith in our society and our country… HOWEVER, I stop and remember that there are times when only the squeaky wheel is heard, therefore, NOT indicative that the whole machine is defective.

Don’t lose faith. Even if there are differing political perspectives, there ARE people who will look past those disparities, listen to variances in perspective, and think about ways to move forward.

I would love to chime in more on how I see things, but the underlying problem I have with this is that everyone is doing so, and no one is listening.

I was speaking with the boy after he got home from school and I vented about the several hours’ of quiet I had with the irritation-induced writer’s block that kept me from using that time productively. “It is getting harder to write about history when it just seems like no one really cares,” was my main point. Offer a different look on something, and the feedback is a maddening default to the expectation biases of narrow-minded critics. Attribute one effect to a cause which is unpopular, and the list of logical fallacies becomes part of the response…

“…Too much, too much.”

As I started on this post, though, a couple points once again became clear:

I write for my kids. What I have to offer here is what I hope they will appreciate when they are old enough to wrap their heads around it. It just so happens that I am also reaching out to a larger audience of friends and strangers who may or may not “get it.” That’s cool, and I hope that the reader enjoys and appreciates these interludes of frustration as a necessary part of my creative process.

I write because I have to. The more I am unable to write, the harder it is to get back into a semi-coherent groove… and the longer it takes me to write. It’s frustrating, but it is accepted as my own reality.

Finally, to the critics: no one has forced you to get to this particular point in this blog. Like it or leave it, these are your choices. Like everything else in life, your participation is a matter of your choosing, but as it has been said before:

“You can complain, but the result will not be the one you expect.”