Recently several friends who are
not on Facebook reached out to me asking if I’m OK. They wondered why I haven’t
blogged in months. Four months, to be exact. Today I received a message from
the blogging platform I use, asking if I still want to receive comments left on
my posts. Since I rarely received comments when I was actively blogging, I took
this message as their way to ask: Are you still blogging?
I decided to write a post
explaining where I’ve been and letting folks know that yes, I’m still among the
living, if just barely. Without getting too deep into the weeds, here’s why I
stopped blogging.
My style is primarily social
satire. There’s a person in the public eye who is an obvious target for this
type of humor. He had been a rich source of material for my blogs for over a
year. I always put a link to my blog posts on my Facebook page. I learned that
many of my Facebook friends either don’t understand or don’t appreciate satire.
Especially if it’s directed at said focus of my writing. The resulting vitriol
in the comments on my posts led me to discontinue sharing my opinions.
For awhile, I still wrote for
pleasure, but published in other outlets where the readers appreciate my style
and mindset. The more the behavior of our national leaders descended into
policies and language that I found alarming and offensive, the darker my world
became. Simply put, I lost interest in writing just about anything. I spent many
afternoons sprawled on the couch watching Hallmark channel romcom movies. Some of them for
the third time.
For the past month, my days were
more consumed helping my husband recover from his first knee replacement
surgery. Everything went far better than anticipated, but the household
schedule changed dramatically. Instead of being here for 2 ½ days a week, he
was here full time. Meaning more grocery shopping and meal preparation, and
multiple drug store runs. Since he was on the couch in the family room, I began
working again on a book that I started about six years ago that’s been on the
back burner.
I took my husband back to his store
in Providence yesterday. So it’s a good time to decide whether to crawl back
into my dark hole or come up for air. The recent passing of Senator John McCain
provided more incentive to get on with my life. He was a decent man and true
hero, no matter what you might have thought of his politics. I reflected on
McCain’s exhortation in his final letter to all of us: “Do not despair of our
present difficulties. We believe always in the promise and greatness of America
because nothing is inevitable here.”
Punctuate that with the
not-surprising debacle around the White House flag. The inquiry from my
blogging platform was the final push. While I still “despair of our present
difficulties,” I’ve decided it’s time to get back to the writing I enjoy most. That
means I’ll come down off the “high road” some of the time. I’m sure I’ll have
plenty of company down there in the muck and the mire. If I offend some of you,
if you have strong opinions that differ from mine, save your vitriol for your
own blog or Facebook posts. Stop reading mine. We’ll both be happier.
