FOWC with Fandango — Balcony
I am standing on my deck. Let’s call it a balcony for today’s purposes. The railing isn’t high. I’m looking down at the ground below and realizing that I’m not enjoying this anymore. Blogging, that is.
I barely have time to read anyone’s writing and have even less time to write my own. I get hundreds of emails a day and am so frustrated by the deluge that mostly, I delete everything and read almost nothing.
Part of it is the problem are morning “posts.” These used to be about something. They were stories and musings and sometimes memories about life and love and feelings. Sometimes they were angry or frustrated, but always they were personal and had some meaning, at least to the author. Now I read them and they are exercises in “how many ‘prompted words’ can I fit in this piece and still have it make some kind of sense?”
The result is that these pieces have no heart to them. They are nothing but plays on words. They have no soul.
I haven’t been much participating with them. Every once in a while, in the name of trying to be a good sport I give it a try, but to me, it’s vapid and silly. Many of the offered words are words I avoid when writing.
I don’t want to do it anymore.
On top of not wanting to join in, I don’t even want to read them. They don’t say anything to me. With a few notable exceptions — the few people who write about a single thing — it’s like reading a comic strip, but not funny.
Maybe it’s the fault of WordPress or maybe it’s the political nightmare of the past couple of years … or possibly it’s the political nightmare of a lifetime. For me, if I can’t write what I want to write, then why am I writing?
I am left with a decision: to keep going my own way. Do my own thing (whatever that is!) … or throw in the towel. The former probably because I will write regardless and it might as well be for an audience. But fewer pieces and only if I have something I think it worth saying.
I didn’t start to blog — or continue for 6 years — so I could fit words into a puzzle alternating with rants about our universal political nightmare or the failure of Earth’s people to maintain a world in which we can thrive.
Short of urging people to vote, what more can I say? Shall I live the rest of my life in rage at the evil of the world? Shall these last years of my life be stolen by the people I hate the most?
I think not.
This morning, I unsubscribed from all the news sheets. They will find me anyway. They will sneak in under the door and through the closed windows. Of course, there’s always breaking news at CNN and I can go and sit in their Situation Room and ponder the day’s hysteria.
It isn’t that that I think everything is okay. I think nothing is okay … but I cannot live in a boiling kettle, brooding on the ills of the world. Maybe if we all come together and work at it, we can all fix it. Together. Collectively. But individually? Not a chance.
So I lean on the balcony and realize, there’s no point in falling, intentionally or not. I wouldn’t die of it. I’d just be injured and miserable.
Whatever time we have remaining, I hope it hangs in there as long as I have to live. I hope our representatives — yours and mine — remember they aren’t in it for the money. They are supposed to keep the world a place in which it is worth living.
As for morning prompts? Have fun kids. Puzzles are one way to pass a day.