Analysis Complete. Results Are Inconclusive.

Here is your unrelated photo. It is pretty.

I’m fifty. Fifty.  We’d like to pretend that age is a number but we’re just fooling ourselves.  Certain ages mean certain things in our lives.  They just do. I’m not sure what fifty means to me but it’s something monumental.  Maybe I want it to be.

I have been writing essays like this, in some form, since 1988 or so.  I had dreams of becoming a comedian or a comedy writer and this type of stuff is what you trade in.  Opinions.  Satire.  Making connections to the seemingly unconnectable. It’s part of my personality.  Part of my life.  I just don’t think I can give it any more of my time. 

There is a blog file on my computer.  I have completed essays and ideas in there.  I wrote one about what a history major understands but I haven’t put it out.  I wrote one about vengeance movies a few years ago and it still sits unfinished.  I have topics related to my basic tastes in life, a few reasons I had no interest in growing up, and learning to let go.  I’m sure I could have fleshed them out and made some good points and a few funnies along the way.  But I don’t want to.

There are a few reasons.  One, it feeds my ongoing argumentative brain.  We all have that part of our mind.  It’s the part that prepares speeches to other people that will never happen, and if they did, they wouldn’t make a difference.  Two, I already have a large project that occupies my creative time.  Siphoning off time to write quippy stuff doesn’t help me there.  Three, only friends, family and fans would give a shit about these bon mots anyway.  I have maybe four friends and fam who read these, and I have no fans because no one knows my work.  Lastly, and this may be the most important detail, I post these on the internet, and they are promoted through social media.  I think we can safely say reading is not first and foremost for the majority of people on the internet.  If I post a photo of Mount Hood or a selfie, I get a lot of attention.  If I write one thousand words about being poor or moral absolutism, no one reads it. (There may be an adage about that somewhere.) I have to pair each blog post with a photo, any photo, to get eyeballs on it.

Sometimes the only reaction I get is for the photo.

This isn’t a pity party…this is the way of the world.  I think I tried to walk away from this once before but something drew me back.  But I think I’m done.  I have tons of ideas, but I’m going to shove them into a fictional work or just save them for me.  Doing this allows me to let some of the big ideas go.  The sad ones.  The ones that make you stare out of your window and wonder how to fix everything. The ones that make you stay inside instead of dipping your toe into social interactions.  The ones that separate each other.  No one, not a single one of us, has all of the answers and is right about everything. We can understand that, but what we fail to address is what those thoughts do to us individually.  They distort reality. They rob us of time.

“Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.”

This is a statement that most overthinkers learn and digest in their twenties, I would guess.  I had to cobble together my own milestones and they are all out of any logical order.  But I made them. I give a shit about people and the world.  I am an optimist and I can back it up. But that’s it. My responsibility ends there. You don’t need to fix anything unless you are asked, and no one is asking. 

I wrote before that I will write about the writing process. I will. I will write about writing and I can still get something out there. I think writers are supposed to have an internet presence of some kind when it comes time for a publisher to bank on you.  (At least I think that’s the truth.)

I don’t know what will become of the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written down.  No one does.