01 November 2004 by Published in: in my life 1 comment

The collective sense of relief that tomorrow will bring will be widespread, I suspect. Everyone living in this country with a pulse has surely reached their political saturation point by now. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a tv-watching, land-line having, swing state living voter right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those folks are ready to scream. For my part, I’m glad I voted absentee a couple of weeks ago. For a week I just tuned everything election related out, but this last four days or so the shrieking pitch has been so invasive that even a sideliner like me has been blasted by it. I don’t remember it being this way in other presidential election years. I remember actively seeking out election information, listening avidly to news programs and scouring CNN for third party debates. I remember being passionate and interested instead of reeling and overloaded. Maybe it is different this time around. Maybe I’m different this time around. All I know is I will not be sorry to see this election cycle come to its conclusion.


In other news, it’s strange for it to be November and for me not to be participating in Nanowrimo. I activated my account, because I wanted to see the new page layout and the new forums and other goodies, so I got the first pep talk in the email this morning. It was good. Really good. It made me have to stop myself from sitting down and trying to start on a novel right then and there. I was trying to work my brain around the half-formed ideas I have, whether I could string them together Bradbury style and pretend they were something other than disparate short stories, at best. I was trying to tell myself to write anyway, and note a word count, and to hell with whether it was really a novel or not. Who would know but me? I was thinking about the blog, and how the rss feed politely tells me how many words I write, and thinking about how I might leverage that for word count. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? That wouldn’t be the real spirit of the thing. No. No. I’m just going to have to stick by my guns and say count me out this year. Maybe next year. Or maybe next year I’ll no longer need something like Nanowrimo to get me all fired up to write. Wouldn’t that be amazing? And wouldn’t it be amazing if I could do something different but still productive, like write in the blog every day for a month? To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never yet managed that, and it’s not like I have a shortage of blogging subjects. While I’m on the subject of writing, I’m going to refer to a comment here, though I usually don’t do that. I figure it’s not sporting to answer people who just feel like saying their piece on my comments, so I haven’t often really singled them out or brought them up in any of my posts. That’s deliberate and difficult to do, as the temptation is always for me to answer things and have the last word. But comments should stand on their own without much tinkering from me, in my opinion. At least until someone really makes me angry. However, I’d like to thank my friend Michael aka Lanf for the vote of confidence. It was so gratifying, for some reason, to hear him say (and I paraphrase, as you can see), “Well, duh, I totally thought you would do the writing thing, what else would you do?” Indeed.


I haven’t blogged much about Simone lately. This is not because I’m better or over her death or anything like that. I’m still wrestling with persistent pain and working through some very tough times. Some days, I count myself lucky just to get to the end of the day, to be able to cross it off the list, to keep moving forward. I understand that this is a fairly common grieving position to be in. I might need to write more about her, and maybe soon, but I have actively been trying to avoid it. A lot of my thoughts and my pain don’t tread much new ground, and I feel myself teetering near wallowing sometimes, and I don’t really think that brings anything constructive to my ongoing monologue here, so I omit it. I’m not sure how much good that is doing me. Sometimes, I suppose, things could bear repeating. A lot of my sentences would begin still. Still hurts. Still missing. Still sad. Still longing.


New paragraph, new topic. I wanted to update everyone on my oft-discussed hair. I am not going to be bald, that much is clear by now. I have as much new growth as I have hair loss, and though I still think I’m losing more hair than I should be (certainly more hair than I’d like to lose), I’m not losing nearly as much as I was. Apparently it was just the stress of Simone’s death, coupled with drastic hormone shifts as I forcefully stopped nursing. I’ve got another two decades or so to fuss over my leonine locks. Huzzah. Not that I still wouldn’t like a satin pillow to pamper my hair but I’ll have to wait on someone else to get that for me, I think.

Comments

Charlie
Tue 02nd Nov 2004 at 8:36 am

I was reading this as some of my co-workers came in this morning discussing the election and who they were supporting. I guess the things that really bother me are how misinformed people are and how little they care for another persons opinion when it doesn’t match their own.

When asked who I voted for, something that I think is impolite at best and rude at worst, I stated who I didn’t vote for and was going to let it drop. When pressed on the issue I told them that due to the man’s beliefs he would probably end up putting people like me in jail because according to his supporters my very lifestyle flies in the face of the Bible. After the ensuing rant about Christianity, war, lies, evil etc, etc…I did the only thing I could do…I laughed at them.

Not the best thing to do but the sheer audacity of someone telling me how to vote and using misinformation and lies to support their choice was too much. Does either candidate ultimately care about the little people? I doubt it. Personally, I’ll be glad when today is over so I can get a little bit of peace and quiet again

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