First of all, thank you for indulging me with the likely unnecessary post from Wednesday. In the grand scheme of things the extremely minimal level of ire I draw probably didn’t deserve an entire blog post, but I am in a constant state of frustration, which makes me tetchy. Even on a good day it is in my nature to fly off the handle, or respond with inappropriate levels of anger. I’ve never been a very balanced individual. When you combine that with a world that has taught me to expect vicious attacks at every turn it takes me off my hinges a bit. So much of my personality exists at polar odds with itself it’s a wonder I can function at all. In any event with the US election drawing ever closer I expect people to get more and more unhinged. Since it is difficult to escape the rhetoric in the modern era people get way more frantic than they did before social media. Not because people were more sane, but rather we can now see that most people are little more than strategically shaved apes in people clothes, and that is worrying. Civilization is easier to maintain when you can’t see how uncivil the world is so easily. Additionally as the elderly drop off we lose more and more calming voices who’ve seen it all before , and get new ones who’ve seen nothing and know every. fucking. thing. The battle between the old and young is more pointed than ever since the old can get much, much, older than before on a regular basis. At this point we are, in the US at least, regularly governed by ancient lunatics and scoundrels who would have been abandoned by the tribe in the long, long, ago. Of course we also have a big batch of young lunatics that we will have to suffer for decades now too. It’s east to understand why tension would spill into places like the comment sections of largely obscure webcomics.
In many ways I’m on the sidelines of this as I have no family of my own. I’m affected so much less than people who are responsible for more lives than their own. I can barely cope with looking out for me, I don’t understand how people manage having children at all. The responsibility is immense. I suppose that’s why so many people fail at it to degrees ranging from mild to abject horror. Existing is a trial even at the best of times and we aren’t in those currently. Shit’s fucked, as the youth say. More so than I’ve ever seen in my nearly half century. All I can offer is this little haven where I try not to remind you of reality more than I need to. This blog post is actually running very counter to my goals. We can’t always stick our heads in the sand though. Even I must face facts from time to time. The future is a grim, and lonely, proposition. For me at any rate. At this point ignoring the oncoming future is the only defense I have left. Otherwise I would simply slide, inexorably, into the abyss.
“What do you do when you can’t do nothin’, but there’s nothin’ you can do?”
“You do what you can.”
My father has told us our whole lives to “get out and do some good in the world”. I don’t think I’m capable of doing big good, so I try to do this small good in hopes that the ripples of it will spread out into the world. A little bit of good, even the smallest good you can do, builds over time. It holds back the tide of bad a little longer. You’ll never win, but sometimes things aren’t as simple as a simple win or loss.

Posts authored by Jackie

2689 In Praise Of Something.