Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Exasperation

A friend asked me recently to blog more. Well, fine, what would you like me to blog about? How sad I can get? How lonely I am most days? How heartbroken I still am? Would you like to read all about how barren the dating landscape is for someone of my age and with my apparently unlikeable personality? Because, trust me, it's depressing. And I really don't think it's just that I'm completely unable to trust anyone after the only person I've ever loved threw me away one morning with absolutely no notice. (And, who are we kidding, I still kinda love the bastard, even though he doesn't deserve it.)

Or you could read all about how frustrated I am at work now. How a job I loved and used to live for has become completely unfulfilling, leaving me feeling stifled and useless. Not to mention that the workplace, which for so long was my main source of friends, has become downright unfriendly of late.

Or we could talk about how I can't afford to do anything proactive to improve my life because of the ridiculous expenses I have incurred due to the hideous roller skating incident. And I have good health insurance! Imagine how overwhelmed I would be otherwise. Which then just ticks me off to think how many people in this country would deny access to affordable health care for all of their fellow humans. Which then just leads me into thinking how hopeless our country is because the mean pro-business, anti-government, anti-compassion jerks seem to be controlling everything.

But, really, what does any of my petty unhappiness matter when the entire human race will die out in another 100 years because the global warming deniers will continue to refuse to do anything to save the planet?

So if you want to know why I haven't been blogging much lately, well, it's probably because I'm too busy trying not to cry.

UPDATE: Ok, so apparently my ability to write firmly tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top nonsense has gone missing. Because the above was not intended to be taken as a reflection of my current mental state. It was a statement of exasperation, at the world, at writer's block, at life block. So, since this space is theoretically my rants and I always feel better after a good rant, I just went nuts, ranting about everything that's been bugging me lately. And while no one seems to get me (a topic for another rant), it did seem to have achieved the desired result of unleashing the creative juices.

3 comments:

Burt Likko said...

Since you asked, I follow your blog because I enjoy your writing style and you pick subjects to write about that are of interest to me. Those subjects include particular criminal cases that underline your own insights into the law whether that material come from the media or from your own practice, slices of your life that illustrate what the life and practice of a lawyer in a different discipline within the profession than mine is all about, and because I'm not always so high-falutin' as that, sports and in particular the NFL (draft day is coming soon for me and you've offered no thoughts at all about the Chiefs this year, I'm very disappointed).

Your writing continually challenges me to re-evaluate my own position on a constellation of issues, in particular the death penalty. I enjoy that. You've educated me about the realities of how the criminal justice system really works. You've pointed out examples of systemic injustice and ingrained biases within the system that cry out for remediating. That's all really good stuff.

This next thought may sound a little tough, but I offer it with sincerity and an honest absence of malice -- reading about how bad your life has become over the past year or so is not nearly so interesting as the stuff I've described above, and a good deal less pleasant. I honestly can't tell you if your life really sucks as bad as you make it seem, or if you're just suffering a bout of feeling sorry for yourself. Now, we all feel sorry for ourselves from time to time, and you're allowed to do that too, but that's not what I come here hoping to read about. It's a good bet that your real-life friends who read the blog would also prefer to not get heavy, frequent doses of Depressed Sarah, and given that Happy Sarah may be a little while coming back on the scene, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they'd prefer instead to hear from Insightful-and-Witty Sarah, or even Righteously-Outraged Sarah.

If you your own life is so unpleasant that there is nothing enjoyable or worthwhile in it about which to write, then look elsewhere for material about which to write. The law is a rich field from which to mine source material. You can produce challenging, engagingly-written, and insightful material and I hope for more of that sort of stuff in the future.

S said...

What can I say. I have been feeling very exhausted and pissy lately. And discouraged about the state of the world in general. I need to stop reading non-fiction about politics and religion because it is making it hard for me to be optimistic about much of anything. I just finished reading "The Republican War on Science" which has me now convinced the planet will, in fact, die within the next 100 years. And, yes, I was the kid in elementary school who couldn't sleep every night because I worried about nuclear war beginning any day. I'm a little bit out of fight right now. (And, no, my life really isn't that bad.)

As for the Chiefs, well, they haven't shown much in their preseason games. Their final one is tonight, but I doubt we'll see much then, either, because I doubt our first string will play much. I am hopeful that this season we will see the quarterback who had a perfect rating in the first half against Jacksonville last year and only missed one game after an appendectomy, coming back to lead his team to the divisional championship. I'd much rather see that one than the one who showed up in our only playoff game. We shall see.

I do have about half a dozen blog posts I have started but just can't seem to motivate myself to finish. I suspect when the Amanda Knox appeal trial concludes this fall, you will hear from me. But I've always been a bit of a venter, so I hope no one will read too much into it if I indulge myself every once in a while in a very discouraged post. I'm an intense, passionate, moody person which I usually manage to harness for good, but sometimes the negativity wins out. I am an inherently optimistic person, though, and hope always does win out.

FURBOLL said...

You’ve now written 2 postings that have caused me to not lurk and reply. I forget how exactly I found your blog, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with one of you postings about something that was going in your personal life that I was going through myself. Your views of the law were just an added bonus which made me choose to add it to my RSS reader. But my point is that if you feel like blogging about whatever, then go right ahead. That’s what I do and let me tell you it has become a great form of release for me.
You mentioned maybe still being in love with someone who left you and they don’t deserve it. Been there, done that. It’s been over 2 years for me and I still think about her. And I was one of those guys that said I would never let it happen to me. Because of what I went through with her I learned several new things. One being “It takes time to get over it” and statements similar to that mean absolutely nothing, and are about as true as “the customer is always right”.
Anyway not going to write a book here, I’ll save that for my blog. But if you’re feeling as bad as you say, try something for me if you have the time. Go back and read some of your old postings. I think you might feel better just knowing that you got your opinions out there.

 
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