I like to kid around and slough the feeling off with humor in posts like these, but I have a serious (at least, to the extent it is possible for me to ever be really serious) confession to make.
I’m feeling so burned out by politics that I am genuinely worried.
It is too far away from “the” election to be feeling this way. I cannot remember a time in my life that I was so burned out and literally drained during what should normally be a political off time.
Am I alone?
When I attempted to google the feeling, I found evidence that I wasn’t:
After a LOT of thought about political matters lately (see my GD threads), I’ve decided (again) I’ve had enough. I’ve already deleted at least one blog from my Firefox address bar, and may do it to more. And this a blog of MY general political bent!
It’s just stress I don’t need or want. I know it’s important stuff, but the steady drumbeat is just wearing me down.
Y’know, as I’m thinking about this, I have a feeling I’m not alone on this, and may answer a question I’ve wondered about whether and how much partisan blogs accurately reflect the general voter thought and mood on their side of the aisle. If they don’t, it’s because of moments like mine all across the country. Or else, they never have that moment because they don’t bother with the subject to begin with…
No idea who wrote that, or whether he or she is on the right or the left.
But the election cycles in this country have become so seamlessly endless that we are always in the middle of elections. And the ever-louder political drumbeats take their toll. Day after day, year after year, whether I agree or not, whether I pay attention or not, and whether I am burned out or not.
Perhaps the only escape is the certain knowledge that eventually I won’t hear them.
What would be a neat trick would be if I could figure out how to use this blog to conquer the problem, because after writing daily posts for nearly eight years it sometimes feels as if blogging about politics might exacerbate the political burnout problem.
There is that old saying that the first step in dealing with a problem is by admitting you have one. (In the case of political blogging, maybe I have two….)
Hence the post.
UPDATE: Via an email, I just got an image I find utterly inspiring:
Why not? It works for Coco…
AND MORE: Some beautiful white-petaled flowers sprang open just today in my backyard alongside the blue ones that have been open for a week or so:
At first I thought they were daisies, but after noticing that the flowers only have eight petals (daisies have many more than that), I googled white flower with eight petals and looked at pictures until I found an exact match
They are bloodroot flowers:
Bloodroot is a perennial wildflower that’s native to the eastern woodlands of North America. Its name is derived from the thick, red sap that leaks from the rhizome when cut.
The sap, btw, is said to have medicinal and magical properties.
No word on whether it has political properties, but the FDA seems to frown on its unsupervised use.
Let it bloom, I say.
There will be bloodroot!
Comments
9 responses to “Will blogging about the problem make it go away?”
I hear ya, I’m in the same boat that you’re in. Guess this is what we as a nation get once we’ve decided that absolutely everything *has* to be centralized in Washington, huh?
Don’t get discouraged, you’re not alone. 🙂
Regards,
Brian
The apocryphal tale about the prophet preaching in the desert applies here.
When asked if he thought he would convert others, he responded that he preached so that he himself did not become what the others were.
The worst part, for me, is the pissing in the wind.
We’re absolutely doomed.
Our political class stinks, our media is lazy, stupid, ignorant and biased and most people don’t pay any attention and say, “Oh they all lie”. Which is a huge cop-out.
Of course they lie, they’re people. What do they lie about? That’s the question.
So I’m left watching the country I love sliding into either civil war or a nannarchy.
I don’t want either outcome. The Tea Parties are an attempt to right the ship, and our political, social, moral and intellectual betters told us to go screw.
We have over a $trillion in deficits in the budget and the GOP had their phantom $38 billion in “cuts” that turned out to be $hundreds of millions and were really about cutting future increases.
And they were the “cutters”.
Cutting back to the already hugely bloated budget of 2008 is impossible.
We’re all screwed. I’m just rooting for an asteroid.
I think the blue flowers are what we used to call “Quaker Ladies” back home.
jb, thanks!
Veeshir I won’t root for an asteroid because there are still a few things I would like to do (politics aside). And I don’t think I’ll live to see the doom, for even though we are in serious decline, history shows there’s usually a substantial lag time between decline and the actual final fall. (Being 56, I doubt I’ll live that long.)
Lynne thanks for getting me started on the blue flowers as I was wondering what they were. I think they may be Siberian squill; this picture is a match:
http://northernshade.ca/2008/05/19/pretty-blue-spring-bulbs/
Oddly, it is not native to Siberia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Squill
As long as politicians keep saying “My (our)plan will…”” instead of, “You know, this is going to hurt like a @!%$#” I am not going to pay more than passing attention. I have prepared as best I can for whatever may come. That will have to do.
Lovely flowers.
I mostly quit blogging because of burnout. And I did it a lot earlier. As Veeshir said: “The worst part, for me, is the pissing in the wind.” I found myself shrugging and thinking, “Been there, been outraged at that, nothing changed.”
So, I get my urge to talk back out now by sneaking around leaving snarky comments on blogs. 😉
I sympathize. I hope you stay around, as you run one of my favorite sites on which to leave my snarky comments on. But I’ll certainly understand if you don’t.
Eric,
Good luck with it all. Just want to say, I LOVE the “then chew it” pic. It is quite perfect.
Eric, some of your best posts have not been political. One particularly inspired one came from a dream or day dream you had. Your site has so much good stuff that you need a bibliography to appreciate it.
No two people are going to agree about everything, especially in politics and religion. It’s just the nature of the subjects. So you either get cheerleaders or snarky nitpickers like me.
The dirty, rotten, stinking, SOB politicians will never do the right thing until events, or people with pitchforks, force them.