On A Writing Malaise

 One of my favoritest bloggers on the InterWeb, OldAFSarge, has been going through a writing block over the past few weeks.  He notes, for lack of a better terms, a sort of malaise about the state of the world that is both mentally exhausting and makes writing hard.

I find myself in the same situation.

Writing is, for me, an enjoyable activity overall.  I wish I understood more why that is:  it provides me precisely zero financial input, can be time consuming, and other than the kind and intelligent comments people leave (I really do have the best commenters on the InterWeb), I have little enough to show for it.

I have written regularly in some form or fashion since 1989, when I was at school overseas in The Near Abroad. The habit just seemed to stick with me after that; on one of my shelves are all the journals reaching back into the dust of time:  Pre-children, Pre-Mrs. Toirdhealbheach Beucail, Pre-Full Career Choice - in a lot of ways, pre-everything that I have going on today.  The journaling still happens of course; there is a journaling every morning prior to addressing the blog which deals often in the more personal issues, but sometimes in random things (and occasionally, posts that make their way here).

So why do I find myself in the Authoring Doldrums©?

A fair amount of it, I think has to do with The Current State of Affairs.  Yes, I know, this sort of thing has been going on for a long time now (as Resident Optimist Ed would point out) and somehow things have always managed to swing back around in some form or fashion.  Yet in my heart of heart, this time feels different to me for some indefinable reason that I cannot put my finger on.

Is our leadership bad virtually all the way around?  With some notable exceptions, yes: the U.S. System seems to now promote, both in its bureaucracy and in its politics, a combination of gaming the system to get in and then once in, to ensure that things never change (for others in the Near Abroad, your mileage may vary, but by and large it looks just as bleak).  The fact that we are arguing about whether the idea of an endless supply of money (The Debt Ceiling) is good or bad thing when we personally know from practice that debt is always enslaving and surplus is only enabling is says more to me than anything else of the fact that we are quite close to abandoning all good sense forever.

Add to this basic leadership gap that almost anywhere one looks - international relations, world economy, domestic policy, pretty much anything that government touches one way or the other - something seems to be built on a pile of incendiary materials, waiting to go up in a cloud of fire as easily as using gasoline to "start" the bar-be-cue.  Our leadership gap is not isolated, it is almost everywhere - and almost on a day to day basis now, I feel as if we are one bad decision away from a civilization ending catastrophe (not world ending, but civilization ending).

Still, I try to find balance in things.

One, frankly, is just re-reading history, specifically things like the fall of the Empires.  There is nothing like revisiting the collapse of the Roman Empire or the city state system of Greece or the Fall of Byzantium to remind one's self that civilizational collapse happens and, while not pleasant for most of the people involved, people move on through it to the other side.  Even reminding myself of Anglo-Saxon England and how it emerged from Roman Britain has been a comfort (cold, sometimes) of how new civilizations come out of old.

Another place I find balance is simply in reading the well thought out comments of readers like you and the blog entries I read - my morning is almost always full with the allocated time for blogging in catching up and commenting with many of the fine people you see to the right of this post.  In both cases they give me perspective, remind me that I am not alone in seeing and feeling things are out of whack, and the simple practices of life that go on while we are living through difficult times. I cannot garden like Leigh or build a mechanical things like STxAR (I still understand about 20% of what he says about his work) or work wood like Kev or cook like Rain or write fiction like Sarge or just write encyclopedically like Eaton Rapids Joe, but I can take comfort in their practices and their lives and that people - real people, not those that proclaim to be Our Political And Social Betters (OPASB) - are out there doing their everyday things, the stuff of which life is actually made.

Finally, of course, is Nature herself.

The photo above was taken yesterday on my morning walk with Poppy The Brave. It is a sunrise in New Home, something I been gifted with something like 4,000 times or more since we moved here.  The colors are brilliant, as they always are; the clouds drift silently overhead as they have as long as there were clouds, taking no notice of the world below or being interfered with by it.  The same is true at The Ranch, of course; there is nothing there that takes notice of all of these troubles I write of.  The grass grows, the trees sway in the wind, the wildlife goes about its business knowing nothing of debt ceilings or flying objects or a general lack of leadership in the world.

Earth, says The Preacher, abides.  Would that I would remind myself of that more often.

An Additional Note and Request:  Long time friend of this blog LindaG has posted a prayer request on her blog.  It is her story to tell; I will say I am sensitized to it because we went through the same thing with TB The Elder as well. I am sure she would covet your prayers (and I would be awfully obliged to you as well).