Tragedies, calamities, doom, damnation, and the world is ending. Well, it probably IS ending and I don’t think there’s much I can do about it.

I’ve been feeling tired of being me for a while. Possibly years. I am sure anything I want to say I’ve said before and not just once. I’ve used different words, but I’m repeating myself and I hear the echoes of my own writing ringing in my ears. Even though I realize not everyone is going to get all excited about my artistic pretensions, I decided to not keep doing the same stuff. I promise — if I have something new and interesting to talk about, I will. But when it’s another version of the same old same old? Hell, I’m tired of me, so I can only imagine the weariness factor for everyone on my “list.”

There’s a boatload of political crap — not to mention an actual ground war — going on, but I’m not ready to jump into that leaking lifeboat. I’ve served my time.

Despite my best intentions, I did not save the world. I didn’t even save a tiny piece of it.

It’s fun to do something different. It has been a while since blogging felt like fun. It was fun when I began, but soon enough it began to feel like work. Finally, it devolved to a sense of obligation and feeling — against all commonsense — that in some small way, my opinion mattered.

Does it matter? If so, tell me how.

I went and bought a lot of colored pencils, paper, watercolors, more paper, outlining pens, erasers, brushes — and more pencils and paper. Whether anyone else will be interested in what I’m doing, I have no idea. It’s not important. I think after I passed the one million hit mark, I’d reached my goal. I didn’t know I had a goal until I reached it. I’m sure that means something, but I have no idea what.

After all this blogging time, I do not see a better world or even a hint or hope of a better world. I see the same sad stories. Only the names change. It’s time for others to deal with current and future disasters. I already did my bit for earlier disasters.

It’s not that I’m too old to keep fighting. It’s that I’m too old to keep fighting the SAME battles.

For example, I’ve been fighting for the right of women to be allowed to control her own body since I was a teenager — which is 60 years ago. It’s not over. It will never be over, but please feel free to carry on.

In all things creative, there comes a point where you need to move on. I’ve been feeling that way for a while. It’s not that there isn’t more than enough stuff happening in the world about which I could write, but I’ve already written about it. True, what’s happening now isn’t exactly the same as what happened 10 years ago or last year, but it’s not all that different either.

I was trying to imagine being in the news and trying to come up with another way to report an event that is essentially the same as hundreds of other events you’ve reported. The town is different, so it’s a different fire department, but otherwise?

You could pre-write the news.

You just need a sheaf of scripts for fires, murders, blizzards, hurricanes, and every other natural and unnatural disaster. You could do the same thing with politics. You could do the standups in advance and just slot the appropriate pol into position. There would be elections, scandals, even bigger scandals, outright theft and corruption. Basically, the reporters end up saying the same stuff anyway — and for that matter, so do the pols.

Denials — “It never happened.” Semi-denials — “Well, maybe it sort of happened, but it wasn’t my fault.” Admissions — “Okay, I did it, but I promise I won’t do it again.” Finally, resignation: “I did it, I’m really sorry, please don’t put me in jail.”

That’s what Fox already does, except they don’t wait for an actual event. They make stuff up because what they do (ask them, they’ll tell you) isn’t news. It’s entertainment. If you believe it and it turns out to be total fabrication, well, they never forced you to believe their nonsense, did they?

And now, we have to take a break and let our sponsors sell stuff. See you later with more recycled stories.

Categories: #American-history, #News, #Sketchbook, Anecdote, Arts, creativity, Culture, Drawings, History, Media

Tags: #Blogging, #Photography, #Sketchbook, Artk, change, drawing, humor, Marilyn Armstrong