Just when I was starting to get back into a bit of a writing groove, wouldn’t you just know that life happened? Odd how that works, isn’t it? There’s a little more to it than that, though.
Like almost everyone, I got fairly busy around the holidays. Not unpleasantly so, but there was just enough going on that I didn’t feel like writing. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas! Ken got me some cool and unique things, and I’ll write about that in the near future.
It’s also crunch time for my reading goals. I had two. First was the Facebook reading group I belong to, in which our individual goal is to read 50 books during the year. I was starting to sweat whether or not I’d get there, but I buckled down and reached that last week. Yay me! My second goal is my personal one through my Shelfari and Goodreads pages, and that is 52 books for the year. I’m currently reading #52, so I’m going to be able to meet that goal as well. Double yay! I had a brief period where I just didn’t feel like reading, which is unusual for me. But my goals made me resolve to keep at it and not just take the time to read, but to make it. I will work harder on that in the coming year. I have a lot of books to read (that’s the understatement of the decade), including getting back into the Modern Library Top 100 list. (I’m working my way up to #1, and I’m currently due to start #57.)
We’ll be heading down to Kansas City for our New Year’s celebration, so I’ve been thinking about that and getting our plans set. We’ll be hanging out with what I’ve come to call the Kansas City gang, including Bob and Michele, Joe and Maria (actually from Chicago), and Pat and Whitney. We’ll get to see Bob and Jeff play Wednesday night, and then the Rainmakers are playing New Year’s Eve! They are an amazing live band and I’m excited not just to see them play again, but to enjoy our time with them as friends. We have fun!
Finally, although there is much to discuss in the world of politics, I find myself retreating from it to an unprecedented—for me—degree. I’m hoping that if everyone stops giving Trump oxygen, his candidacy will asphyxiate. I can’t quite express how dismaying I find his candidacy and how upsetting it is to me that he has supporters who think he’s capable of leading our country. Especially knowing that I’m sure there are people I know that are supporting him. They walk amongst us.
I’m still paying attention, of course, and watching all the debates and reading plenty of articles, but I’m finding that I’m having a hard time discussing it with anyone who thinks that Trump would make a dandy President. It’s so irrational and illogical that my brain just can’t wrap itself around it and I sometimes feel that a portion of our populace has gone stark raving mad. It is unsettling, to say the least, and I have a hard time writing about it. I’m doing my level best to be fair and to raise the discourse to a reasonable level, but when it comes right down to it, I just want to take these people by the shoulders, shake them, and shout, “Are you fucking nuts?! Stop it! Just stop it!”
I’m learning that for my own health and well-being, it’s best not to discuss it with them. My blood pressure runs a little high, and I’ll be really pissed off if Donald Trump gives me a thrombo. What a horrible way to go.
Anyway, things will settle down soon enough and I’ll work on getting back here a little more often. Lots of fun music stuff happening (Duran Duran 4-evah!), and when I do write about politics, I’ll try to keep it either substantive or funny, and leave the anger to the unwashed masses who hate that the world is changing around them and that they have to be “politically correct” (but thank goodness Trump is there to “tell it like it is!”) and who think that their billionaire spokesmodel will somehow help them feel like less of a loser by reasserting their white privilege and God-given place at the top of the heap. Everything will be okay once we build that big beautiful wall and get all the browns out, right?
[deep breath]
But that’s for another day. Have a Happy New Year, and let’s work together to make 2016 a good one...for all of us!
