Don't Believe a Word I Say

Really. It's not that I'm an intentional liar. But who am I kidding?


I said I'd get my head out of the news, but I can't do it.


My last entry concerned the many innovators and creative types offering amazing ideas and solutions, out here in the hinterland of American blogging. And I opined that our federal government could benefit from some of the resourceful thinking of these people, who try to live on budgets and avoid waste.


Then I got off on a frustrated tirade, and in trying to rein myself in, I wrote this:

I'm going to try to ignore the whole process until my voting day (Tuesday, May 8) and focus on getting my own house in better order.

So much for that sentiment.  It was a lie.  I can't possibly ignore something I'm passionately interested in.  Today, I'm nose-deep in articles about everything from trans-vaginal ultrasounds to 0.2% interest rates to the questionable value of FEMA to discussions of the relative benefits of an Israeli preemptive strike in Iran.


I love this stuff.  Why go on denying it?  It's important to me to understand how things that effect my family and me come about. I don't live in a bubble, and life-changing events don't occur in a void. I don't like to feel blindsided by things like rising gas prices.  In fact, I truly feel unsympathetic to those wide-eyed whiners who are interviewed at the gas pump for the evening news. Sample quote: "The oil companies keep getting richer and spilling their oil all over public oceans, but they don't care if we can't even afford their product. What's going to happen to travelling for spring break and summer vacation?"  Wow, what a grasp of the problem!


I'm unsympathetic, but not without compassion. Staying abreast of political news, elections, policy developments, etc., is not interesting to very many people I know.  But I truly enjoy following the national news, reading predictions and analysis and opinions and finding meaning in the alleged efforts of our government to lead us out of financial turmoil and spiritual confusion and into the peace and prosperity only a nanny state can deliver.  


And I do realize I'm pretty much in the minority as hobbies go.  Nowhere is that clearer to me than this blog.  If I write about pseudo-reality, likemy idiotic efforts at keeping a clean house, or trying an exercise class invented by masochists, or arguing in British with my husband, people read it and share it and comment on it.  


However, if I blog about issues I really care about, like politics, religion and the decline of morality in American culture, the chorus of yawns is audible. So I've avoided many subjects except to take a humorous swipe at some passing event. I've wanted to get more serious in expressing my thoughts and opinions, but I've also wanted this blog to be a humorous exercise and a place to relieve the stress of being the screwball goof-off that I am.


So my idea is to start another blog, one devoted to serious issues I care about, so as not to drag down this one, which has a few followers who appreciate the more lighthearted tone.


To those of you who are laughing up your sleeve, mentally asking me how I think I can manage two blogs when I'm not even that prolific with one, well, I wonder about that, too.  But I'm hoping that having a clearer divide between my silly observations and my serious musings will loosen my self-imposed restraint.  My hope is that I will write better and more often with two platforms serving two different needs.


I have to find a name for the new blog, and would love it if people wish to offer suggestions.  "Clearly Confused" came to me in a dream, but somehow it lacks gravitas, that much sought-after intangible commodity necessary for serious bloggers.  So pitch me your ideas...I'd rather steal one of yours than try to think up my own!


I'm planning to upload all those rants I keep mentioning - the "unpublishable" ones - on this new blog, when I get a name for it.  For now I'll stay on Blogger, since I lack the expertise, creativity and especially energy and motivation to move to a classier platform, like WordPress.  


So all this means that I may have found a way to resolve my schizo interests, and be able to justify sitting on my giant butt in my pjs, with a laptop and an IV drip of coffee, reading and typing, day in and day out.  Just like I do now, but with a public justification for my behavior.