I haven't posted any blogs since September, neither here on JD's Blahs nor on My Search Goes On. Not that I've broken any hearts or lost a bunch of followers because I don't have many followers to begin with. The truth is I write for myself because I enjoy it and I enjoy the feeling I get from writing that makes it seem as if I'm being creative. At the same time when it comes to posting I'm fully aware that others may see my words but that's not the first thing on my mind. No offense to whoever reads my blog in the near future but my primary thought when I'm posting is I hope my words will be read by family or friends somewhere in the future who might develop an interest in me in a genealogy sense. I have a set of diaries written by my great great grandfather that are like gold to me. If a great great grandchild of mine can access my blogs, regardless of how boring my writing and life may be, I'm betting they will be thrilled to have a picture of my thoughts. But my recent reluctance to post is not for fear of disappointing anyone now or in the future. I just haven't put together anything that seemed worthwhile. Perhaps this lapse took place due to plain old procrastination. Add to that my weakness to succumb to the allure of distractions and I feel I have run up against the wall known as writer's block. I have a few half finished works in draft form floating on my Blogger work page but nothing that felt right to go ahead and complete. And looking back on them now I still feel they were not worthy of posting. So if today's attempt results in a posting then maybe I can claim victory over my writer's block. We'll just have to see how it goes.
I don't see my writer's block as evidence that I went brain dead. I don't think so anyway (how would I know)? I'm thinking it's just more like falling asleep at the switch. I know there are still a few episodes of brain cell activity inside my head from time to time. Maybe not a lot but some conscious thoughts seem to be still banging around in my cranial cavity most days and surely they coexist along with unconscious ones too. I don't become aware of what the unconscious thoughts are up to until I arrive at some destination and then can't remember why I went there. (Destinations like another room in the house or at the pantry type destinations, not Orlando or San Francisco). So conscious or unconscious, whatever, I'm still able to put together a few rational thoughts and conclusions now and then. Right, wrong, smart, dumb, inspired or generated by the boredom of my exciting life, it doesn't matter. Every thought is in the mix. They just haven't all formulated into a coherent dissertation I feel worthy of posting. Time will tell how this one works out or maybe it'll just join its cousins in unposted Blogger drafts.
So perhaps the real culprit is those distractions I mentioned above. There was the presidential election, of course. I confess I got addicted to morning and evening news programs just to get the latest scoop on the campaigns. If I was unable to view them for whatever reason I usually recorded them on my DVR but the bad part about that was the evening time slot conflicted with Seinfeld reruns. When sacrifice was called for it was Jerry and friends that bit the dust. Didn't want to miss any gaffes committed by any candidate and immediately following that the incredulous and outraged indignation of the opponent. What a show! Neither the President nor the Governor let us down in that regard. I found it fascinating to watch. Sunday morning talk shows on the three major networks were my evening news on steroids. ABC (live) at 9 am, NBC (live) at 10am, and I recorded CBS running in the 10:30 to 11:30 am slot so's not to miss a beat. Although truth be told, the first half hour of each of these hour long programs was usually taken up by the candidates' staff or supporters and I quickly grew tired of the ritual stump speeches. For a while it was interesting to see how they sidestepped the questions or bent their answers to promote their agendas. But for me even that got tiring after awhile and it afforded me a good opportunity to read the Sunday newspaper. After some fine tuning in time management I settled into a fairly consistent routine on Sunday morning that made me feel I was keeping up with the issues and the polls from both televised and printed sources.
Watching the news shows on TV during the campaign was fascinating but offset by the negative political commercials. I mentioned in a September blog that we had developed a means of ignoring the ads with liberal use of our mute button. You can't catch them all, of course. Let your mind wander for a minute and the next thing you know some doofus is explaining why the opposition would be a disaster for the country. If we could find the remote it was mute button time. If the remote was misplaced we stuck our fingers in our ears and sang Beethoven's famous unfinished symphony entitled La La La La La, (and the chorus La La La). Until we got coordinated there was a lot of singing in our house. By the beginning of November we pretty much had it down to a science. And we did our best to be neutral of which parties' ads were muted. Even our favored candidates ads were distasteful and nauseating after a while so whether we liked the candidate or not, mute, mute, double mute, and sing when necessary. We eventually reached the ultimate stage of ad avoidance by employing PIP, picture in picture, wherein we could monitor another station and switch the channel to view a program without the monotonous repetition of negative political ads. But towards the end this became more difficult as we were being bombarded with ads issued simultaneously in a shock and awe pace on all the networks.
There were other distractions besides monitoring the presidential campaign, all of much lesser consequence to be sure but, nevertheless drew my attention away from blogging. We replaced the second floor of our town home with new carpet, including the stairs. We did this right after filing a claim on our home owner's insurance for some old water damage in one of the upstairs closets. I used the closet repair and new carpet installation as rationale for redecorating my office (which also serves as a guest bedroom) and I spent a lot of time and thought (and too much money) putting together my new man cave. My old desk top is on its last legs after seven years of mostly dependable service so I've replaced it with a laptop. I'm writing this on my second new laptop because the first refurbished laptop had technical problems and I wasted many hours on the phone with southeast Asian technicians with unpronounceable names, each of whom promised that they were going to solve my problem but kept referring me to different departments where I had to explain my problems all over again. After each of these strained and largely unintelligible conversations I just didn't feel motivated to jump back onto my old slow desk top to do any writing. And as much as I love the Sorento I've been leasing for two and a half years I've been day dreaming about turning it in next February and leasing or buying something new. I may just buy the thing but we are planning to reduce our household to just one car and I think we could get better value for my wife's Spyder by trading it in on a new vehicle as opposed to selling it outright. Besides, new car looks, smells, sounds, and open road fantasies have a way of singing sweet siren songs in my ear. And the last but not the least of distractions are lifestyle adjustments necessary to live with a 90 year old mother in law. This is not nearly the burden on me that it is for my wife but without going into details let's just say our empty nest requires adapting and tweaking on occasion to ensure the comfort (and sanity) of all three of us in our household. We love her and want to keep her happy and comfortable for as long as we can. But it ain't easy. We are blessed to have a daughter who volunteers to "babysit" her grandmother from time to time and enables my wife and I to get some couple time by ourselves.
So ready or not, Blogger world, here's my latest blah blog! If you don't like it that's ok. Just remember, I didn't write this for you. This is dedicated to my unborn great great grandchildren. Hope you like it, kids.
