Excuses, Excuses

My guess is that after silence for a year, no one’s still around. So this becomes an open letter to no one in particular, or in other words, a journal of sorts.

There are many reasons why I suddenly stopped posting on this blog last summer – none of them entirely convincing. My rotation into the securities distribution practice group was volatile, unstable, and grueling; I had run out of things to say and had begun posting third-party materials in lieu of original thinking; I had just met a girl and spent some of my energy negotiating that situation; I had a motorcycle and it was summertime. I was bored and burned out. And on and on, etc. etc.

The real reason, as it turns out, is that I was just tired. I wasn’t necessarily tired of writing so much as I was generally beset by a sense of malaise (…that fucking Jimmy Carter) that pretty much sapped any of my ambition and interests other than satisfying my near-to-immediate needs of fun, amusement, entertainment and social contact, not to mention the pleasure of cooking, eating, drinking and being merry in the moments I was not at work. This is not a complaint. There is much to be said about reveling in the stripped down pleasures of everyday life – they quietly fill up more space and provide more joy than we could ever reasonably expect. Maybe this is the Working Life – watching idly as your energy spirals down the drain of your workaday job so that there’s nothing left to devote to the things that matter to you. Or maybe, probably, almost certainly, I have just gotten older, a little bit more withdrawn, and now lack the energy to do the things it takes to do something meaningful. And I am very aware that lacking convictions and interests and pursuits and passions and goals and shit…dreams even by the age of 27 feels like a dangerous and foolish category to have hedonically snoozed my way into.

If this is the case, though, I haven’t gotten over being pissed about it. And maybe being pissed is what brings me back.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, the reason I’m posting is that I hope to begin writing again. In some sense to break the muddied, tire-sticking corporate attorney routine I’ve gotten myself into over the last year or so…and in another sense to begin to remember what it is like to try and communicate with other people. One reason is that the last year or so has been extremely alienating politically. I had virtually given up interest in the political system once I realized that intelligent, reasonable, rational, pragmatic thinking and policy-making would be entirely ignored and violently bucked by a continuation of the irrational class-warfare, fear mongering, ignorance and blind ideology of the radical Republican wings. I still have not heard cogent, reasoned and measured arguments made against any of Obama’s “radical” agenda and have found it so utterly frustrating that so many people are so stupid at the same time with such volume and such fury against policies crafted with such deliberation and sound reasoning disagreeifyoudisagreewithanideabutstopabusingandcheapeningwordsandideasliketyrannyandsocialismandevilandtraitorandevilandassassinationandfreedomandlibertyyoumotherfuckingsackofignorantshitwhodoesnotdeservetoliveinthegloryoflibertyandopportunitythatthiscountryhascreatedforyouandmetolivein…that I’ve simply shut down. Instead of engaging those shouting at me, I’ve ignored them. Instead of trying to discuss a point of policy with someone screaming “traitor” at me, I’ve simply decided that if they cannot comprehend 1 + 1, then they will not comprehend 2 + 2. And even if this turns out to be the only sound strategy (lets call it “stonewall the savages”) - I simply cannot bear it. I can’t. It ruins my day. It ruins my week. It infects everything because any civil conversation can simply be ambushed by a rabid nihilist. When someone earnestly talks about Sarah Palin running for the 2012 presidency because she’s the best candidate, it just makes me want to run outside, tear a brick from the foundation of this building and run screaming towards that person until I can bludgeon them to death, brick in hand. This cannot be healthy. So I fucking refuse. Let them gnash their teeth in anger and loathing…I cannot tolerate the madness. There are enough people both good and sane enough left for us to try to build a better world.

Oh…and of course…I also am back in part because I need to figure what the hell to do with my life. I have just sleepwalked my way through a year or so of my current employment and need to figure out what it is I want to do and where it is I want to go. What is clear is that I would find the status quo unbearable in the medium-to-long term.