A Memory Of How We Once Gave Up

When I started doing this, way back two separate decades ago it was an everyday endeavor. Part of that was because there was an urgency behind it that I neither comprehended nor appreciated at the time as I discovered not only what my writerly "voice" was--its tone, its tendencies, its complexities and its potential--but frankly just the fact that I had one in the first place. To see that I could do it at all was such a shock and relief, I had to nurture and stoke the dim, smoky ember until it burst into a wispy naked flame, which would one day rise into the world-spanning conflagration that is my undeniable talent. If I look back and what actually became of it, you could almost roast one side of a marshmallow to it.

But fire is fire! And I had to get back to it every day to feed it oxygen and soft kindling lest it extinguish entirely. And yes, also at the time I was a stay-at-home parent with three children under five. "Daddy's writing" is a way more legit-sounding excuse to mostly ignore them for an hour or two a day than the normal ones like internet gambling or alcohol. I swear my life has been a lot more work than it should have been just because I don't drink.

It's going on 12 years ago now that the explosion of my personal life derailed that first blog train, which was kind of an unsustainable pace anyway, especially once I started working outside the house.* Switching to writing once a week gave me a chance to be more thoughtful, more circumspect, to better fully soak in the tepid bouillabaisse of popular and political culture. It took the pressure off the daily self-appointed demand to produce something in the content mill of my own devising. I could develop a thought in all its implications and complications and present you, the reader, with a sophisticated, considered, considerate analysis that would further our mutual understanding(s) of what it is to be (and to live among) humans.

I had the chance to do that, I said. The other option was to do just exactly what I was doing before--sitting down in front of the keyboard with zero idea what to write about and just vomit out a half-considered first draft bolstered by some tenuous literary references and a couple half-loaded dick jokes. Except now I only have to do it once per week! I will leave you to decide which way I ultimately went.

The problem with once-per-week is times like this, where T I M E D I L A T I O N is a real fucking thing. Every day seems like it is both 30 seconds long and four years long at the exact same time. It's all one big smear of undifferentiated experience by the minute, hour, day and week. And yet so much is happening. Even if I wanted to cover everything going on,** there just aren't enough hours in one day to do so. I'd need a healthy Patreon income and private health insurance to be able to safely quit my regular gig to devote myself properly to that nonsense.

The problem now is I sit here on a Thursday and instead of the old problem--the Curse of the Blinking Cursor, with nothing immediately in mind to cover--now the blank, unsullied page is a refuge, a bulwark, the last cubic meter of concrete in the dam holding back the crushing weight of water that is the 2020 COVID-19 News Cycle Of Doom. That's not even a melodramatic "doom," that's some ACTUAL DOOM, that's how serious this shit is.

Basically I guess this is all one big apology because sometimes the pace and weight and general chaotic kinetic energy of events is going to push me to write meta-posts like this that are about writing posts like this. You know, kind of the way I just did. In this post. About that.

The other option is to consider everything. Like everything. Because there's no untangling. Like I should be grateful that in my county of 2.5 million people we are only now north of 2,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and only*** 54 deaths to date. Seems pretty chill, right? Except the last few days have seen the fastest levels of increase in cases to date. So overall I feel... good? But also afraid? Am I goofraid? Am I afrood? My main worry is that I'm all four of those things at once, two of which are pretend.

I want to be able to write about this. For now all I can do is wear the mask I made out of a T-shirt that fit me before I got quarantine-fat. And wash my hands. And stay indoors.

And listen some Adam Schlesinger songs.

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*We remember that, don't we? Working outside the house. It was a thing. Look it up on YouTube.

**Hahahahaha

***The sick luxury of "only."