I’ve neglected the blog. I’ve denied its existence. I abandoned it in a field buried under mounds of debris and used lawn furniture. I’ve watched it sink to the bottom of the Marina Trench and land in the alien-like empty sea floor until James Cameron fancies himself another trip to the bottom of the ocean. At least this time he’ll find something, read it, and hire me to write the screenplay for his next film! I haven’t written in months, nor had a desire, maybe no one has noticed.
The blog however is like Michael Corleone in Godfather III. “Every time I think I am done..they pull me back in!!” They being the voices in my head telling me I haven’t written in forever and I’m verging on losing brain cells due to lack of creative activity. How much of this is intelligence, creativity, or just quieting the voices I am not sure. Painters paint, Musicians play music, Writers write novels, and nutcases like me..we pen rambling blogs. No rhyme or reason, no start nor destination, just mumbo jumbo that consumes me.
I know every artist goes through dry spells, even bloggers or a blogist. If someone who shops at TJ Maxx can be a Maxximista I can be a blogist. Let me say this as a returning blogist I am over political season. Supposedly it is just beginning but it can already end as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care who is elected, I don’t care what they stand for, I am indifferent to their policies and personal background and history, just elect one of the two and let us focus on something else. In my industry we have seem to be painted enemy #1 and I’m sick and tired of having conversations everyday about how mad they are at the process. I don’t make the rules, nor do I have a voice within my company to change the process. Too many people think that if they share their voice here we can do something, we can not. The media has fed stories placing blame on sources that are not to blame. It’s a free marker enterprise. If you are unhappy move your business, you can’t change the way a business runs.
If you don’t like a companies policy that is completely fine. When did we become a nation where everyone has to love everyone and we dance and sing in harmony? The benefit of freedom is being free to do something else. No one holds you hostage somewhere you don’t want to be. I hate that I’m even contributing to the gluttony of information on the web. Everyone thinks that their voice needs to be heard, be it a blog, on the streets, holding signs, at your desk, in the classroom. Not every voice does need to be heard or regurgitated on the blogosphere.
A friend of mine told me that an 89 year old man decked her manager in his office over a $1 fee. This is the fuse that has been lit by too much media. People have absolutely lost it. I remember listening to someone once say it is not a major event that causes someone to lose it, it is their shoelace busting. That may set them off because it builds like a powder keg inside of them. Yesterday I had a thirty minute discussion with a client upset over a $6 fee I was already reversing for him. It’s no longer the dollar amount it’s the principle he says. Everything with everyone is the principle. Who sets the principle? Network television which broadcasts commercials for many of the same companies they slander on their news shows that also help pay for the junk food television we are feeding our brains? The over-priced Iphone who are getting your daily news feed from? The local coffee shop which raised the price of flavored water?
The problem with the information age is all the misinformation it feeds everyone. Suddenly everyone is educated about everything, but they failed to learn anything in the process. They may be knowledgeable but they lack a broader perspective. They absorb news but they don’t relate it to themselves and how it truly impacts them. They want rapid responses. Just as the problem with the economy was short-term investors trying to make a quick buck and not thinking long-term, the problem with information junkies and new media is not digesting what we’ve been fed. We vomit the media’s text and words right back into society like a ten week old baby unable to digest baby food.
Frustration exists over a lot of different things but we control how we react to it and that is truly all we do control. Michael Corleone had different ways to react and I hope people realize that was a movie.
