Time for a sabbatical.

I have been maintaining this blog for five years.  Somewhere along the way I lost my original intent, which was to simply leave a record for my children.  This is how it was, these are the things I saw, this is how we got here, I was saying to the kids in their future lives.  I thought that eventually they would read all this, probably after I was gone, in an effort to understand how their world became what it is destined to become.  I could have left a private hand-written diary, but this has been easier, what with the ability to embed links to sources, etc.  I got that they did not want to hear all this depressing information right now – who, in his twenties, wants to think about how crappy his life will be when he is my age?  Not because of anything he has done, mind, but because that is the deliberate plan of a few very wealthy entities who have captured power over the entire planet.  As a matter of fact, my kids set up this website expressly for the purpose of giving me a place to vent – they did not want to hear all this stuff at the dinner table.  So I wrote and recorded, all the while thinking that eventually they will get old enough to become curious about some of the strange goings-on and nasty changes that would begin to affect their daily lives.  (Then old Mom will be vindicated!  Isn’t it funny how much smarter your parents get the older you get? they would say to each other.)  I knew they did not read this blog as I wrote it and I was okay with that.  I was writing for their future selves.  (Despite their lack of interest in my words, I have gotten advice from them on how to make money on the blogging adventure.  Dear God. Where did I go wrong?  No-one will see a “donate” button here or google ads; the idea of trying to hustle a buck from some other poor saps just like myself would be kind of an ironic and twisted perversion.)

My siblings and parents also knew all along I was writing, but they – with one exception – have no interest in this messy stuff, this depressing, awful shit; shit which they assume any crank in any generation could find to complain about, so they do not read it.  The one exception is one of my brothers, who will call and say, “Fine post you had today.”  Or, “How can people ignore what you talked about today?”  I can count on him to offer editorial advice or help in fleshing out a thought.  He never commented publicly here, but his private thoughts have been freely expressed and always helpful. (Me ke aloha, brah.  Mahalo.)

But somewhere along the line, I forgot my original intent.  One or two people left comments and I started thinking I had something to offer the public.  Why, strangers were reading this and finding it useful.  I can be somebody!  Heh, heh.  What silliness.  But that sort of thinking overtakes us gradually, doesn’t it?  Finally, I found that I was actually becoming bitter over the fact that so few people found me interesting or useful, as those couple of commenters never became a larger pool of readers.  And even they have mostly disappeared now.

It is time to regroup.  Writing about the state of things as they currently are and speculating about where we are headed – even though the disastrous direction this country has chosen should be obvious to anyone – really is depressing.  The fact, misguided though it may be and however it came to enter my psyche, that no-one seems to care really is depressing.  And so I have become depressed.  Distressed.

I have new obligations at work and new obligations in my family life that I should be focusing on.  Believe it or not, some of these articles I write take hours and hours.  I check and recheck facts, I search for the best resources, I edit many times before I post something.  I need a break from this self-induced schedule of chronicling our downfall.  I may post an occasional item of outstanding import, but I simply cannot continue inflicting this on myself, at least not until I get over this idea that someone should care.  I need, as they say, perspective.  Fact is, no-one cares and I need to get back to the point where I don’t care that no-one else cares, if you see what I mean.  One third of the Americans polled recently say they would agree to cavity searches on a regular basis while traveling.  What the hell can you possibly say to that?  When I remind someone that nationwide the electric companies and insurance companies used to be state-regulated and non-profit, or that we used to be allowed to protest without permits, in any public area, or that the government paid for all the cable lines to be laid and these communications companies have been making pure profit all along,  or that there did not used to be such things as derivatives and that speculators in the markets were heavily regulated so they served an actual social value, I get a shrug and a “Oh, yeah, I kinda remember that” if they are my age; I get a blanket denial from a younger person, a snotty remark such as, “Where did you hear that?  Where do you get your information?” as though I had not been alive then and remember it or were making up “socialist” crap.  Such is the power of propaganda.   We are not only losing our present and our future, our past is being rewritten for us as though it never happened.  Things were never different than they are right now – what are you on about?

I’ll be around, and no doubt I’ll be back once I collect myself and remember my place in the scheme of things.  In the meantime, stay alert.  Watch for developments on things like the TPP, a false-flag to start war with Iran, austerity inflicted to benefit the oligarchs, tearing up the entire place to frack it all, and the militarization of the country.  If I can find the information, so can you.   Oh, and when pundits tell you that it is now up to the “progressive community” to hold Obama to his words, smack them upside the punkin’ head, because they are deflecting the blame from the system and the brute beasts whom we elected (but none of whom actually gives a damn about us) to us.  They are basically admitting that he lied, his campaign promises are for jack, you did not vote for what you thought you did, in fact your vote never mattered at all, and if he continues to sell the country out to the neocons and big corporations, it is your fault.   Fuck that shit.   Obama does not hear you, compadre, you fucking retarded liberal, you.  You may have voted for him, but you did not elect him; and he serves the ones who made sure he was elected.  Half the country would have been just as happy to have Romney, think about that; a rich asshole who openly says that the wealthy should get everything and the rest of us can fuck off.  What a difference a few short years and a lot of bullshit from the media makes.  That we were content with these two “choices” and actually argued over them.  The die is cast.

Yes, well.  Good luck and Godspeed.

-Teri