When I post infrequently, I tend to come up with material that's a little meatier and woman-on-the-street. When I post daily, I'm constantly digging for stuff or phoning it in.
I mentioned stockpiling a couple of weeks ago, and while it's a good idea, it's also a lot of work, particularly if you want to be timely and relevant.
The other challenge I have--and I've had this from the very beginning of my blogging days--is, I don't have a specific theme for my blog. I'm not a forum. I don't have a focus. I'm not championing a cause or rallying 'round a flag pole. I'm not passionate about an issue. I'm just writing.
The thing is, I could rally and champion. I have a lot I believe in. For example, here's just a small list of some of the things upon which I could strictly focus:
- Women's rights
- Mormonism and its impact on individuals, community, and society-at-large
- Religion and Society
- Gay rights
- Fairness in employment practices
- The erosion of democracy in America
- Recycling and the environment
- Education and the influx of technology on learning
- Ending the war in Iraq/Peace on earth
- Impeaching George Bush and his evil Dick*
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Life could be changing in these parts right after Thanksgiving. I passed the woman selling newspapers at the intersection of Massachusetts and 9th again this morning and thought to myself, I really must stop and talk to her one morning. Perhaps next week...
I greeted Jeremy again the other morning, as I do most every morning. I must remember on Monday to tell him what a lovely smile he has. It's such a pleasure to say hello to him on the mornings he works in the parking garage of the building where I work. I hope he goes to college. I rarely sense things about people, but I sense good things about him and what he has to offer. If I won the lottery tonight, I'd offer him a scholarship.
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Thanksgiving was yesterday and I'm trying to be grateful. Not that I don't have things for which to be grateful, mind you. It's just that this has been quite a year and I'm not sure what to give thanks for aside from the obvious stuff. A friend of mine wrote about dreams the other day and I've been thinking about that ever since. What they were, which ones I've attained and which ones I haven't. Why I have. Or haven't. Whether I still believe I have dreams and whether I still believe in my dreams. And what it is that's keeping me from following my dreams.
For someone who's so damn shallow, that's a lot of deep thinking going on there. I'll let you know how deeply I plumb...
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Another friend of mine recently wrote this: The destruction of my despair is all too familiar, and made mundane by its repetitiveness.
Despite being shallow, this line has stuck with me for the last several days. It is the idea of repetitiveness resulting in the mundane that unnerves me. The idea that somewhere I've reached a point where settling for less than what I know I can achieve is somehow the norm.
Does our despair become mundane because we finally realize and--horrors!--accept that humanity is a letdown and our place in it is less meaningful than we were originally led to believe? Or, have we allowed situations or others to stand in the way of who we are, what we can be, and what we were meant to do?
Where--or maybe when, more appropriately--is it in life that we go from being carefree to being bitter? I told a friend the other day, I miss the come-what-may me. Now I'm just Ms. Crabby Pants.
What I do know definitively is, the repetitiveness, the mundaneness, the quiet, confusing, what-next despair is exhausting. I'm tired. I want to dream again.
More than that, I want my dreams to become repetitive realities of bliss.
* Kudos to my friend, Phoebe, for that line.
2 comments:
"It is the idea of repetitiveness resulting in the mundane that unnerves me. The idea that somewhere I've reached a point where settling for less than what I know I can achieve is somehow the norm."
That is an unnerving thought. I think most of us can fall into a routine that lets us forget that we are capable of expanding our knowledge, our generosity -- our experiences in general.
I always think of that play, "Our Town," and how one of the dead characters looks back at herself when she was younger. She noticed how nobody seemed to appreciate the depth of each mundane moment. Does the parent realize how precious her daughter's smile is? Does the daughter realize how precious her overworried mother's love is? Does the person at the news stand know what a noticeable part he plays in the life of the woman who walks past him each day?
Any mundane moment can be made better by a sensorial immersion once in a while, you know?
The mundaneness I'm so tired of is the kind when once again I'm facing my own self-pity. I bore myself; my world collapses upon itself when I do that.
Loved this post, and it just goes to show you are not a shallow person as you claim.
- Phoebe
Great post, Tewkesy. You are a great writer when you are thinking deeply like this.
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