There are a lot of blogs out there that amount to something only slightly more elaborate than a diary or journal, with a lot of personal examination and coping with issues and so on. I’m not disparaging these at all, because I’m sure they help a lot of people – it’s just never been for me. I don’t usually feel comfortable airing my personal issues here, and it’s not the focus of the blog or website; I imagine readers (heh!) feeling a little uncomfortable with a post that suddenly starts talking about emotional drama immediately alongside the fascinating aspects of slug sex.
Nonetheless, there have been times when stuff has been weighing heavily on my mind, and more than a few circumstances in my life where I’ve been struggling with depression and frustration and so on, and I’ve been very close to writing about it (this is not one of those times, just to forestall the people who think they’ve found some hidden message in here.) Part of what stopped me are the reasons above. Part of what stopped me, some of the time anyway, is that it involved family, and while I name very few people in here directly, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out, especially if you’re one of those family members. Even approaching it indirectly wouldn’t fool very many people.
A small amusing aside: the concern over some family member reading what I have to say here is almost laughable, because not one of them ever reads the blog or even knows how to find the site. Well, I’m overstating a tad; one can, and occasionally sees a post, almost entirely if I link to it. The remainder, however, ranged from not having any computer access at all to not doing a lot with one regardless – no, we do not hail from the Ozarks or anything. Still, I prefer not to post on the odd chance that anyone did stumble across it and have an issue with the content.
In fact, this generic computer-free existence was a part of some of my issues, since the solution to numerous small or large problems could be obtained through the ‘connectedness’ that most of the people in this country, at least, fully embrace and would have a hard time living without. To give an example, I traveled up to NY a couple of years ago to visit my dad, completely bedridden, and delivered a decent, newish tablet computer to him at the time, intended to provide this connectedness, give him plenty to do (including audiobooks that I’d preinstalled on it and numerous website apps,) and even potentially allow video chats. Due to one thing after another, the tablet never achieved an internet connection, which dashed everything but the audiobooks, and he forgot how to access those. You don’t want to know how many times, and in how many ways, I attempted to establish a benefit from this single little device, to no avail.
Some of my frustrations or personal issues had actually been shelved, awaiting a time when I could air them here freely without any fear of reprisal, embarrassment, or other responses that could potentially arise. But here’s the heart of the post: In the intervening time, while I set them aside for a better opportunity to hash them out, they simply… went away. What had occupied my thoughts and impacted my mental state so distinctly became nothing more than trivial when re-examined some time later. Maybe they had always been trivial, in which case it was better not to have posted about them in the first place. Or maybe, given time to get used to the ideas and having no immediate options to exercise, they became buried under more immediate concerns. I don’t know; I’m not going to try to analyze myself and certainly won’t derive some deep psychological insight from this – dog knows, we got enough chowderheads doing that on social media as it is, likely doing more harm than good. All I’m offering is the perspective, which admittedly may only be personal, that in time most of what I’d been concerned with melted down in a little curious puddle, nothing more.
I won’t even say that most situations that impact us are blown out of proportion, or that we (or just I) get too melodramatic about them. Some of my past employment, for instance, was having a far larger negative effect on me than I realized at the time, discovered only after I left and found that my mental state was significantly improved; some things shouldn’t be ignored, or allowed to fester. But others – they just evaporated. I run across the occasional vague comment in past posts regarding something that was affecting me at the time, and usually cannot recall the faintest inkling of what it was.
So, this post notwithstanding, you probably won’t see a lot of introspective, self-evaluating, or even just frustration-airing stuff here, because I’m realizing now that they likely aren’t necessary. Just some time to pass.
[It’s slightly disturbing that I wrote this post considerably faster than many of my Profiles of Nature posts – make of that what you will.]