The End of Act 1

A drawing of my hand from high school.
I included it in my first blog post.

On April 5, 2020, I started this project. That was 3 years and 191 blog posts ago.

Actually, 3 years and 18 days--somehow I forgot my anniversary.

For me, it is no small feat, lasting this long. True, I committed myself to just one post a week. Though, I was astonished to find out that shortly after beginning this blog, I had already added my first Weekly Checkup (I would end up doing 33 of them, the vast majority in my first year). Within a month, I began my Vegetable Gardening and Me post. While both series tapered off, I stuck with the Sunday deadlines.

Most of the time.

However, with each fall, more often then not I picked myself right up, and published the next week. 

  

But, that I forgot my anniversary (indeed, I skipped the two Sundays leading up to it), troubles me. After all, April is my birthday month, and, in 2020, the beginning of the Lockdown. Both played some part inspiring this blog. So, it should have been on my mind.

Three weeks ago, it would have given me something to write about.

Instead, my life as a human distracted me. Children have places to go; laundry and dishes need cleaning; gardens require attention if you want them to grow vegetables. Also, we humans crave crises when they take place outside our neighborhoods (but avoid them when they occur in our backyards). And so, I drowned myself in articles chronicling the tsunami of ignorance that surrounds me, while struggling to free myself from my own. Finally, it does not help that some of my bad habits keep pushing me under. Between procrastination and daydreaming, I find my head under water more often than not.

It is a nice metaphor. But metaphors are not real. They are approximations human have created to make sense of reality. And some times these metaphors are a poor reflection of the real thing. Other times, they become an excuse to avoid action.

In my case, I am not currently drowning. None of this can compare to my last two years of teaching. Nowadays, I have routines for the daily grind of caring for this household. While I feel for those suffering from the fear and resentment of the willfully ignorant, the latter have not harmed me directly. Not yet. And I do a lot to keep myself knowledgeable and educated. Finally, my habits are within my power to change. I have no one else to blame, but myself.

It is my thoughts that keeps me from riding the incoming waves. In particular, the negative ones. The ones that tell me pretending is better than trying. Why look dumb talking about something, when you can daydream that you did all the work to become an expert? Why start a project in which problems will inevitably arise, when you can just sit there and imagine it completed? Why bother writing down your plans creating accountability, when you can pretend to do it, and then forget about it? And why share something you know will upset people even though you know it needs to said, when you can fantasize that you are able to change people's minds?

What does any of this have to do with blogging? Well, as I have argued so many times before, getting certain of my thoughts out into the world would prevent me from losing my sanity. But I am afraid to put them out there. Blogging for three years should have helped me. However, I have yet to redirect my efforts. I still lack the courage to speak up.  

And so, on this belated third anniversary of my blog, with all these thoughts running through my mind, I have decided to call this post "The End of Act 1".

Maybe this will motivate me to change.

(To be continued...)         

Confessions (#23)

I discovered this artist, Eugen von Blaas, two weeks ago,
while working on a project. I find so many of his paintings amusing.
Perhaps, because I have spent so much time surrounded by and listening to women...

This is how I envision people talking about my blog posts,
and text messages, which have been described as novels. 

At the end of last week's post, I mentioned how producing it might inspire me to wake up bright and early the next morning, and write some more. And how it all depended on me. Well, I did not follow through. The next day, I woke up and journaled, but nothing more. The following morning, I added another journal entry. Then went on about my day, never bothering to write another word. And God knows that day I was drowning in a pool of cascading thoughts. Finally, Wednesday ended up being my last journal entry for the week.

Now it is Sunday, which means hunkering down in my bedroom recliner, and spitting something out onto a computer screen. Usually I would have a pile of unfolded laundry requiring my attention. However, because my wife is leaving for a business trip tomorrow, I had to finish that chore yesterday. It actually feels good to have that completed. I go back and forth about switching laundry days. Instead, I spent the last few hours watching, for the first time, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  Funny show, though I found it difficult sitting through the first episode. I constantly suffer from second-hand embarrassment, and these characters insist on being awkward in front of others. But I pushed through, and left the room just a handful of times. 

I would have watched more, but the Mets game began, and my wife is a huge fan. Since I had about an hour-and-a-half before starting dinner, I decided to sit down and blog. The decision had little to do with using my time wisely. Instead, a fear gripped me. A little voice in my mind suggested skipping this week's post. After all, my birthday is coming up this week. And, yes, as a Lord of the Rings fan, this conversation in my head was sprinkled with words like "precious" and "present" and lots of hissing. Also, the ton of sugar cookies dipped in lemon pudding (do not ask--I never got around to adding the fresh fruit to the concoction), frozen shumai from Trader Joe's, a random hot dog, three bottles of diet root beer, and a bunch of other things that I cannot recall right now, has left me bloated. 

So, between not writing anything significant for a week, giving myself only ninety minutes to write this post, and feeling like a beached whale, that I got this far is miraculous. I just wish I had something more meaningful this time around.

Well, the laundry is done, the sugar cookies are almost gone along with the lemon pudding (some day I will explain it), the root beer supply is definitely depleted, tomorrow is a new day, and this blog post is completed.     

Now on to making dinner.  

 

Confessions (#22)

A scene from the film, The Matrix. Neo is waiting for a ride that will change his life,
but he is not sure that he is ready for it. At one point, he will want to escape
back down familiar roads, and avoid the truth.
Here the clip from the movie.

It is 8 pm on an Easter Sunday, and I am sitting at my laptop, figuring out what to write. Actually, it is eight minutes after eight. I spent those minutes running through various topics: book bans, anti-trans legislation, hyperbole, freedom, what I think of Jesus, how I wish I had done this days ago. I even began daydreaming about people commenting on my make-believe blog post. That's just a sample. At some point, not blogging tonight crossed mind. Hell, not blogging ever again reared its ugly head, too.   

When procrastination becomes overwhelming, running away looks like a great option.

However, like Trinity says to Neo in the first Matrix film, a voice inside my head reminded me, "Because you have been down there ... you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be." Half-ass written creative writing assignments, incoherent analytic papers on history topics, unfinished art projects left on the trash bin of my mind, and now empty posts littering this blog. Yea, those are familiar roads.

And I don't want to be there.

Instead, I want to take the red pill, and jump down the rabbit hole of connecting my brain to paper and seeing what bursts forth (now I'm paraphrasing a verse from Hamilton the musical, and butchering it). I want to "write like I am running out of time; write day and night like I am running out of time." I mean, I am running out of time.

But, there is no red pill showing me a world beyond my procrastination. Trinity is not going to show up and inspire me to reject those bad habits. And the life of a short-lived Founding Father who wrote the other fifty-one Federalist Papers is not the best solution for my middle-aged problems.

After skipping two weeks of blogging, I produced tonight's post. It is not much. But, just maybe, it is enough to inspire me. 

Perhaps, I will wake up early tomorrow and actually write my thoughts down.

In the end, it's up to me.