It’s not easy to admit, but politically I’m starting to lose some control of whats been a pretty solid Caring function because its been used up on my Mom. One of the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ (Covey) is don’t worry about things you can’t affect, and while I haven’t pulled that book off the shelf in a while, I know 90% of the stuff many/most of us worry about will happen no matter what. That’s why ‘effective’ means dealing with things you CAN control, like taking an hour away from TV watching and putting some effort into a novel, or sticking to diet goals by not eating (another) frosted doughnut just because it looks lonely in the box.
Time with Mom in her hospital room hasn’t exactly been productive, but politics, geeez! it seems to come up hourly, in an almost relentlessly negative way. Even Rachel Maddow takes a few moments now and then to mention she knows it sounds a bit repetitive. I’ve busted on CNN because Wolfe and the crew show the same 4-5 clips and repeat the story heard 20 minutes ago because they have LOTS of time to fill, and if you watch more than one of the political shows –with a snarky ‘versus the puppet shows on FOX’– yeah, there’s lots of same old, same old. The Mueller Russia investigation grinds on, and while its good poker playing to not show your cards (HE sure doesn’t), this waiting for Godot feeling ain’t cutting it on the Whoopie! Scale.
It seems like I’m shirking my duty as an American who cares about right and wrong to just shrug
The problem is, it seems like I’m shirking my duty as an American who cares about right and wrong to just shrug about a TON of bizarre stuff out of D.C., especially the exceptionally stupid enabling/stonewalling/stick up for the Prez while cramming a mess of brutal negatives (example A-1 being that $1.5 trillion ‘tax break’) down our– well, the non-1% anyway– collective gullets. Yeah, I know some people got extra $$ in their paychecks from that, but along with rolling back civil rights people *died for* 50 years ago, crushing of environmental regulations that truly made a difference, and hey, more than a whiff of misogyny from guys at the top, how can numbly “letting him do the job he was elected to do” be legitimate, liars and Russian bots be extra damned?
Bottom line, what *possible reason* could there be for not wanting to get to the bottom of what is clearly a blatant, documented interference in our election process?
Is there an alternative? Olympics watching maybe, but what about at work? I’m not generally a whiner, but a couple blowhards/apologists/cretin-y Trump-eteers, or even a Demo-centric ‘did you hear?’ conversation just rrrrrs! me. Offer it up for Lent? Sounds whack, doesn’t it? I haven’t done that suffering bit in quite a while, but hey, stop my beer drinking is not a *real* option. A lot of information to be gained from watching triple headers on multiple channels to prepare for upcoming March Madness, y’know, and water with all those chips (but no politics) just doesn’t seem right. I’m doing some volunteer work for Reading Buddies, but that won’t affect politics, nor will getting back to bicycle riding with my new knee, because there is plenty of time to think about things beyond shifting gears on 10-12 mile rides.
Curling up in a ball and just taking it? Naah, that’s useless to the max.
So, my decision is to focus on writing, working on a fantasy world and events I *can* control. I knocked out 50,000 words for annual NaNoRiMo event on November mornings while working crazy graveyard shift hours, and getting three chapters edited and sent to a couple publishers by the end of the month is legit. I KNOW my heroine (Marlena the Magnificent) will pull her fiancee’s bacon out of the fire in time, because while his getting kidnapped sort of messed up the week before their marriage, I have an exciting and righteous path already laid out.
America, good luck to the rest of you about having things work out as necessary– I’ve got Mom and Edgar Allan ‘Poe’ Starkes to think about.
CDTalent Enterprises 