Some of you - the three people who occasionally stop by - are probably wondering what the hell is wrong with me. The surest way to tank a blog's hit count and basically destroy it, is to not post regularly. Wellll... some things are up.
The biggest thing is that I'm not getting in enough rides. Riding is my muse, not just here but professionally. My subconscious does "work" as Dr. Freud would say, while I am riding. When I am not riding, my subconscious doesn't really focus.
The second thing is that a lot of stuff that I'm thinking these days, is sitting-at-the-bar-staring-into-a-double-of-Makers type of thoughts. I'm not depressed, but I'm angsty at what seems to me to be a great societal unraveling of sorts, an undoing of the social institutions that 'oppress' us but also keep us out of trouble. People are no longer happy putting up with misery, or lying media, or hypocritical political leaders, or shit, anything for that matter. The revolutions in the Middle East aren't half of it; Newsweek selling for a dollar, the NY Times dropping below 100k subscriptions, the utter and abject hatred of most honest folks I know for politicians of their own party, as well as the other; the death of the pieties of the age, whether it's feminism and abortion, civility, whatever. Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with a lot of the institutions that are getting punished, but I don't want to see social institutions destroyed by what appears to be a big human race-wide nihilistic streak that is getting aired out right now. Institutions are what govern our behavior; take those voluntary associations away, and you're left with a bunch of rules, along with a bunch of people who don't give a fuck about rules because they aren't invested in them. Our media and political elites are leading the nihilism; most of us are going along and enjoying the ride, because some nihilism is fun. But at some point, we don't learn 8th grade math until we sit down in the seats and listen to teacher- yet I get a sense that most of us have decided we're never going to listen to teacher ever again. Killing authorities off sounds like fun. It frequently results in a new regime that's a lot worse than the old one. We're in the midst of the murder of the old authorities, whether they were fraudulent, neutral or meritorious; it doesn't seem to matter much. Tom Friedman can crow all he wants, but China is a big facebook outburst away from a revolution too. Nobody is safe right now. This great unraveling weighs on my mind.
The third thing is I'm done being amused by myself, at least in this forum. I've said all I can say about me, though that doesn't prevent me from using the first person pronoun, in some permutation, six times in the last two sentences. I'm just not that interesting to me at this point, and I presume that if I'm not amused by me right now, you won't be either. So this reduces my writing here to stuff that is only tangentially about me - good rides, races, music. Which is cool but there doesn't seem to be as much cool stuff to pass on to you.
Fourth, and maybe least significantly, I'm working on doing some other writing. Nothing I want to talk about right now, but it's personal, maybe it becomes commercial at some point, but for right now it's about creating something. This is taking a lot of my writing focus and it's taking a lot of discipline. I've been dreading writing this post for a while because doing so will commit me to pushing through on the project I'm working on, but there it is. Instead of squandering my talents on you all, I'm squandering them on something... that will probably never see the light of day. But we all have to have our projects. Don't worry Womble, it isn't an anti-environment manifesto that ends with me lobbing burning Snowy Owls into the Sierra Club's headquarters.
Fifth, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Only a little bit of non-fiction, but working my way through the sci fi canon, and uncovering for myself some modern books that probably deserve to be called classics. Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep? Amazing book. Engrossing. Speaks to current information infrastructure problems and security challenges. Whoops, there goes four evenings... So you see what I mean?
Sixth, I'm making a concerted effort to double down on the riding and fitness, including making an honest effort at the Word That Begins With D But Which Shall Remain Nameless. This is a Shut Up And Ride thing for me. I gotta do it, and the less I talk about it, the more I'll have to focus on the task at hand. I'm sick of being "pretty fast for a fat guy." I'll say no more about this and concentrate on showing my intent as the season goes on.
That's what's happened to this blog. I want to keep on working with it but right now I just don't have the gas to treat all y'all like you deserve to be treated with regular entertaining writings from planet Jimbo. So I apologize, but on the other hand... well, you ain't payin', so I ain't apologizin' all that much. I suggest you put me in your Blogspot favorites, or get me on the RSS feed (that's around here somewhere...) so that you get pinged when I do publish. But I don't want to let you guys down. I've got a good readership, I've made a lot of friends through this blog, but I'm just not that into it right now. I got some other shit I gotta do, and although I may not blog intensively after it's done, I'm damn sure not going to blog intensively until it is done. Sure, I have a couple canned posts in me. But don't be upset when I go AWOL for a week or two here or there. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, even a man who is just pretty fast for a fat guy.
Capisce?
5 comments:
My prescription? Multiple Extended Yellow Loops at Gambrill until the black bits become dislodged from that grey matter. Take a foldable chair, the latest book in the queue, and a discreet nightmare fuel container. Sit at the Tea House, sip the fermented (and perhaps distilled) grain juice, and read some of that fiction in your post-ride reverie.
If you're not feeling it, you only dishonor it by phoning it in.
P.S. - What in the hell am I supposed to do with all these snowy owls?
I hear that Snowy Owls are just the thing for post-ride smoothies. You need to pluck 'em first though, otherwise you'll never get the feathers out of the blender blades.
What's one thing that makes you a better writer? Writing. What's the other thing that makes you a better rider? Reading. Blogging has likely improved your wrtiting prowess, and I understand where your coming from.
I write to no audience most of the time with the understanding that I get better at writing just through the exercise of doing it.
I enjoy your posts and will check back for them. Good luck on your project! A full life is full of new challenges.
Agree with a lot of what you have said, especially about increasing loathing of one's own political party. And since you're a music guy, you'll appreciate that one song seems to be running through my head a lot these days, "Won't Get Fooled Again."...Sing it with me, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.".....Good luck with all your endeavors from a west coast reader.
Dr. Brett - thanks for the insight & compliment.
JJ - it's not right vs. left any more. It's the folks who want to exercise a lot of power over our lives (govt & corporate), versus the rest of us who just want to ride our machines and not get hassled by the Man. You can't so much as shake hands with that sumbitch, without strings getting attached to it...
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