Two months since I felt a need to blog. Feels like twenty fucking years, eh?

I hope everyone is doing well. I know it almost feels hollow to hear/read that since it’s a general and broad sentiment shared by maybe 98% of the population, but hey, I mean it.

Anyway, I don’t write things unless I have an intent and blogging is if anything, a soapbox, so I find myself with something to soapbox.

This, all of this? It was always broken. The systems, the infrastructure, the very essence of what we believe is a free society. All of it. Broken. People simply choose to ignore it in the hopes that it will go unnoticed; maybe even disappear.

Problem is, nothing broken goes away until you clean it up.

I understand we need hope, but I think the past three and a half years has at least opened many eyes to just how broken everything is and now with the realization that clean up might not be an overnight gig, some folks are retreating to the old ways–maintain eye contact to the horizon, keep walking, no looking down, etc.

That’s a problem.

I’ve found a lot of the fear that comes from the realization of level of effort is stemmed by trying to bring incremental improvement to my own life. And when I say incremental, I mean incremental.

I used to – ha, still do – have a worrying problem. Any decision that could possibly make ripples elsewhere, I break it down and try to imagine all the angles. I’ve realized it’s more a mix of fear and procrastination than it is actual caution, but it’s something that’s given me more agita than I ever really needed in life and was at one point in my life dulled by a little more chemical abuse.

Without that luxury, well, I sort of have to face things down.

And I realized what I was doing wrong when I broke my problems and decisions down: I always thought of myself last. I worked backwards and it was a really dumb way of breaking things down.

Now, I’m not a proponent of radical selfishness, but I do believe when we internalize we should start with us. We need to work from the inside out and while yes, duh, Angel, of course that’s how it should work; well, how often does it really work that way? How often do we make our decisions entirely around what others will think or based on what others could/would do for/to us? How often do we do this when we’re rarely on the minds of those we’re thinking of?

So why bother driving yourself insane? What good will that do to drive the improvement – to clean the mess that is you? Or do we use others as excuses to ignore our own shattered nonsense and are more willing to step on broken glass than we are to simply find the goddamn broom?

Not sure what the answer is there, but I think it starts with us. I think it starts with taking stock of ourselves, realizing what makes us happy, and being true to who we are. We’re surrounded by rubble but we have an opportunity to better ourselves in a way no generation has before. So why not give it a shot and why not do it on our own terms?

Shit, it’s not like anyone is literally next to us in the case it blows up in our faces.

Anyway, stay safe and healthy. Hope you’re all OK and finding ways to occupy yourselves and maybe make those incremental changes that help you to cope, breathe a little easier, and possibly improve things.

And if not? That’s fine too. Just holler if you need an ear.