Okay, so this is totally personal and if that is not your cup of tea, there are tons of great diaries on the list today. Go take a look at one of them, argue, agree, scheme and plan like the activists and interested Liberals and others that you all are.
For the three who stuck around, I gotta vent. I am at the end of my freaking rope and things look really bleak. I am by nature an optimist, things will be better, they just take some time and work. I believe that with all my being yet I don’t know what to do today.
The last 15 months have been the worst of my life and I don’t see a path to them getting better. Losing my job, my wife losing her job, both our Moms very sick, Liz’s is in hospice while mine struggles to recover from surgery that did not turn out well at all. Going bankrupt, the dammed dog needing surgery, having bills pile up. It is all overwhelming me today, it is overwhelming my optimism.
I’m not one to sit around. I have applied for thousands of jobs, I’ve had Kossack’s give me tons of leads, and sadly none have panned out. I am one of those folks who like to stay in motion, if there is a problem, work the problem and fix it. I don’t know how to work this set of problems anymore. I have kept a normal work schedule, I have done things that will let me feel more in control (if you really need a little control, bake, trust me on this) and yet I feel like I am going under.
It is bad news when an arrogant fella like me feels like there is nothing that can be done. Maybe it is the impending mess this fall, maybe it is the fact that I see millions just like me being ignored by a political party who is willing to make things worse for political gain, and the fact that it seems to be working. Maybe it is the grinding down of myself worth as every avenue I can think of for getting a job and saving my little family turns into a blind alley.
I know this is whinny, and I hate that. After all you don’t hear Sisyphus bitching about rolling that boulder up hill, so why should I? I just have to get this out of my head if I am, in the words of Bard to go "Once more into the breach dear friends, once more!".
I know I am having a massive failure of compassion, thinking about my own troubles when so many of my fellow citizens are actually homeless or dying or desperate. I have the love of my family and friends, a roof over my head (for now) and my health, but for the all of me I can’t seem to get the will together to fight.
I feel like I have finally run the tank of optimism dry. I don’t know how to quit, yet I don’t have a clue how to go on and get to my goals. Just having to write that is a stab in my heart. I feel like I have lost who I am. I blog, I bake, I advocate and I look for work. These are the things I do, and they do define me. Yet I don’t know this guy. The person I am right this minute is on the verge of giving up. I don’t give up, I get the shit kicked out of me but I don’t quit. Still today the idea of throwing my hands up and just drifting with whatever happens next has a lot of appeal.
Now, I don’t want anyone to worry unduly about me. I’ll get my act together, I always do one way or the other. It is just hard to take the best path when there don’t seem to be any good ones. However despair is not a Liberal value. I won’t wallow in this loss of confidence for more than a few more paragraphs (is that sighs of relief I hear?).
The thing I missed in my description of myself is the fact I get up when knocked down. If there is a single defining trait to my life it is that I get up when I’ve been knocked down. It is time to brush myself off and get going, that boulder won’t roll itself.
Thanks to everyone who read this and this community for letting me get this shit out of my head. It is silly but after five years of doing this nothing quite seems as real unless I’ve written about it.
The floor is yours