Writing, the Universe, and Everything…

…or something like that.

I’ve not blogged much the past few months, and I thought I should come over here and try to explain why as best I can. (As I do have regular readers, and some do ask me, “Barb, what’s up with your blog? Don’t you have anything to say these days?”)

Well, it’s a combination of things.

First, my health kind of took a nosedive at the beginning of the year, and I haven’t fully regained my strength. This has affected me with everything except my editing, because I need more energy to write (either music or words) than I do to edit. (Why? I don’t know. It just seems to be that way.)

Second, I have been editing a lot. This is a very good thing, and I’m happy to have the work. However, I have a tendency while editing of blocking out nearly everything else, including my own writing, as the manuscript I’m working on takes priority.

Third, the crises — plural of crisis — in the United States have made me furious at times, frustrated at many times, despairing some of the time, and wondering what the Hell is going on nearly all of the time. I can’t help but notice that there’s all sorts of unrest, and I wonder if we’re going to be able to have a peaceful and quiet election due to some of the things that have happened. (The latest being a plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, by a right-wing militia group that seemed to believe she was a traitor. Why they believed this is beyond my comprehension. And even if they believed this fervently, they should’ve let the authorities handle it, not taken matters into their own hands.)

Then, there’s the pandemic–where my state of Wisconsin continues to be among the worst in the nation for community spread of the coronavirus. My family is on edge. There’s a lot of anxiety. Hospitals are near capacity or at/above capacity in many places. A sort of “tent city” has been set up again in Milwaukee for overflow Covid cases…and the only reason Wisconsin hasn’t been quarantined, I think, is because of the obstructionists among the Republicans in our heavily gerrymandered state legislature. (Wisconsin is a true purple state, where it’s closely split among Democrats and Republicans. But somehow, the state assembly — our lower house — is 2/3s R, while our Senate is also controlled by the Rs but not with as much of a margin.) These folks among the Rs do not want to do anything, at all. Except sue over the mask mandate, or sue because they don’t like something the governor is doing, or sue because they want to block vote-by-mail if it comes in after the day of the election (which some of it will, considering how the mail service has been bollixed lately).

I can’t help but see all that, and be appalled.

I think our duly elected representatives should be able to do better than this. Yet they can’t. Not in the state, not at the federal level (where the Hell is the second stimulus bill? Sitting on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk again, no doubt…and him a Republican. Somehow I sense a theme there. But I digress.)

Then there was that debacle of a Presidential debate a bit over a week ago, which also didn’t give me any feeling that the current President, Donald Trump, took his job seriously. (He certainly didn’t take that debate seriously, interrupting and sounding like a petulant child as much as he could. And going off on tangents, as often as he possibly could, some of which made no sense whatsoever.)

With all that going on, maybe it’s not that surprising that my writing has been slowed way, way down.

That said, I recently have been able to do more writing. I have finally figured out how to prioritize my writing — something that has eluded me for years — and I’m getting more done, both with writing music and words. I’ve told myself that maybe my writing will never matter to anyone but me — as my sales record, thus far anyway, is (for lack of a better term) dismal. But as it does matter to me, I am going to keep trying.

And as I’ve said before, writing — whether music or words — helps me function. I feel better when I write. And I also feel better when I take my own needs seriously, and prioritize them, as I ought…another theme here, huh?

Anyway, the point of this blog is mostly to tell you that I’m alive, I’m still writing, and that I do have hope. I’m not sure why I have hope. I’ve seen and done and lived through so much stuff, and am continuing to see and do and live through even more stuff, that there have been times I’ve thought, “Where is that light at the end of the tunnel I’ve heard so much about? And why the Hell can’t I find it?”

Still. I have hope. And hope matters to me, as does my writing and any creative pursuits I’m able to pursue at the moment (obviously, playing any concerts is out for the foreseeable future due to worries/fears about Covid-19 and how it could allow audiences to more easily contract the virus).

I’m still here. I’m doing what I can. I’m looking for as many positives as there might be, from enjoying a drive-thru hamburger to hearing some of my favorite music, quite unexpectedly, when I’m out and about. In this way, I will overcome as many obstacles as possible.

So, the state of the Elfyverse — or at least writing, the universe, and everything — is stable. And I will try to blog more often, honest…at least to let you all know I’m alive.