It looks like my days as a writer are coming to an end, if this journal is any indication. Gone are the days when I used to come here three times a day to get something off my chest. Now I go a month without writing. Social media has rendered blogging extraneous, but that’s a lame excuse to stop. The good news is that I am trying to expand my knowledge of the guitar, because even at my amateur level ( I know no theory, or keys, or technique) there are moments where I transcend, hitting that spot where noise becomes an actual expression of feelings.
I must force myself to do this, this writing thing. That’s unfortunate, because now and then I am good at it. My primary target online has been one Donald J. Trump, who is currently “leading” this country via his smartphone. I don’t know how we put ourselves in this situation. Everyone with an intact prefrontal cortex is trying to figure out how we collectively found the absolute stupidest person we have ever run across on this bluegreen ball and made him president. H.L. Mencken knew we were going to do this almost 100 years ago, and oil magnate turned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reported from the field that he could confirm that we had done such.
I tire of the Trump saga. The ending is long overdue, and thanks to the chickenshit lassitude of Congress it will come far later than it ought to. There’s even a possible (some would even say probable given the credulousness of half of the voting population coupled with the infighting on the left) future that Trump will get another term. Lately, I just watch scandal after scandal drift by without bothering much to tarry upon them because no one in power wants to do anything about it. Eventually, Robert Mueller will pull the string that either gets him fired or gets Trump indicted. Wake me when that happens. I will march with you for sure.
Sometimes I think I should switch focus and begin to write about my struggles with bipolar disorder. Lord knows that this blog was born in the ashes of a very manic phoenix. I still keep my rants, as embarrassing as they are. They’re part and parcel of me, for better or for worse. Thanks to the VA and a pair of dedicated doctors, I’m coping and if you talked to me today you would have no idea that I lost my mind and got locked up in a loony bin. I have no career despite a four year degree, due to the severity of my illness. Now and then I think that unfortunate, but if I look back, in every job I have ever had I have always managed to disclose that I am not well by my actions or words. I was either the court jester or woefully incompetent at a job, often a mix of the two. Just what every functioning business needs. The Army was a strange but necessary choice for me because I never saw a bridge I didn’t want to burn. I am very lucky to have spent nine years in uniform, because I would never have been diagnosed as chronically ill were it not for the free and comprehensive healthcare I received during my hitches.
Bellyaching is customary in the service, so it’s no surprise to me when I hear soldiers or ex-soldiers criticize the armed service healthcare system. And it’s gotten political. Predictably, the conservatives are itching to fix the problem by introducing the profit motive, as if that ever helped anything. You don’t leave medical care to the lowest bidder, doubly so for the people who volunteer to get shot at for a living instead of you. The reality is that we broke a lot of soldiers in our recent history, and we need more hospitals and more doctors who study things like TBIs and PTSD. We could have improved the veteran infrastructure and a half a dozen other things by upping taxes on the absurdly rich at some point, who, like it or not, are really who our soldiers fight for so you can just zip it right now about us fighting for freedom. But nooo, we had to have tax cuts because Americans are really bad at looking out for each other and knowing where their bread is buttered (or knowing anything worth knowing, as seems to increasingly be the case thanks to a thriving misinformation industry). Anyway, it’s best for everyone that I am home, tending to the house while the wife toils in the insurance business. She’s going back to school at 40 to get her degree so she has more choices. No one winds up in insurance because they like it, unless you are at the top of the food chain selling policies and getting 5 digit commissions. You generally have to have a dick to get that job. So best for her that she gets out before she goes gray.
After a decade of treatment, we are still trying to hit the right pharmaceutical formula to help me be the best me. I guess it’s something I could expound upon that may be interesting to other sufferers of bipolar disorder and anxiety. Maybe I’ll fuck with that. I might also do music reviews of old music because that’s what I buy as a cranky old person-I used to enjoy a little rock journalism. There’s some other, darker stuff on my mind I’d like to get out, but it will take thousands more words to say it correctly and I’ve hit a thousand already talking about what I’m going to be talking about or not talking about. How exciting for you. I hope I screw up the courage and the will to use this thing again and try something.