Our Struggle on Vacation
Hello. I have been mostly absent for the past two weeks or so, outside of an angry rant on guns or some bitter screed about how stupid I think people are. I have been wallowing in a negative zone for this stretch of time mostly because I fucked up my left foot, but also from the considerations of family and household repair. Our children spent the first four weeks of summer away at sleepaway camp, freeing my wife and I to lounge around, spend some time together, have a few outings, and sleep, while paying some people to completely redesign one of our bathrooms. Of course once the children returned, chaos erupted. They are both well into their obnoxious years: selfish, lazy teenagers demanding something new every second of every day, having no understanding of reality or financial considerations, and arguing about literally everything. “Take the trash out, please,” turns into something so outrageous that you begin to understand why the mild parental beatings of the past may have some merit. And while this has never been me, that anger the grows and grows sometimes explodes into my own irrationality, causes me to realize that, after all, they are still only children.
Parenting is exhausting and anger never works. It only teaches them to be angry people themselves. I have learned to keep my mouth shut after giving instruction and simply take away things that they want, reduce their freedom, add onto the chores, or force them to perform tasks they truly cannot stand. It is a far more subtle torture, and far more effective, I have found, than shouting and outrage.
Anyway, the children have distracted me from my professional responsibilities (and I am not talking about this, but the work-for-payment projects that allow me to make a living). They yammer away, no matter how many times I take them out to swim, or on hikes, and whatever other activities they eventually earn, and I am constantly interrupted and cannot think clearly, the rhythm broken, the words gone stagnant, the point lost, the purpose finally meaningless. I have numerous abandoned pieces on here that will likely be recalled next year when I do my second “blooper reel” (check out the first one if you have time.) I am exhausted. I need a vacation . . .
Tomorrow our family is going out of town for a week, a tour of eastern Canada, from Niagara Falls, through Toronto and Quebec and Montreal. We are all very excited. Last year we went to Alaska and it seems to now be our family tradition to take a trip before the next school year begins. As a result of this, of course, I will be further incommunicado on this site. I do not like the pieces I have written on my phone, the jagged language and typos displaying both my stubby fingers and tremendous lack of patience. They all seem very irritable and sloppy to me in hindsight. Perhaps there will come a brief update on the trip, or a comment about something specific, but other than that I will melt into the family that seems to have otherwise been annoying me since I have been injured (walking is going to be a problem for long periods of time on vacation, but that will be dealt with as it comes.)
Anyway, my audience here (and on the other handful of platforms: Medium, Pinterest, LinkedIn) continues to grow, recently rather significantly, and for this I thank you. It makes one feel pretty good to know that there is a limited interest in a few of the things I have to say (whether pro or con is meaningless, because negative reviews are every bit as important as positive, allowing me to believe that my words have some sort of impact. People who think what you are saying is shit, backed up by an emotional attack, tend to be your most regular readers.)
This will be the 328th piece I have published here on Recording Editorial History, and I have been very encouraged lately by the many of you who have decided to backtrack and read some of the older essays. Several of of them that I believe to be worthwhile have yet to be revisited and a number that are frankly crap have had a number of recent peeks. But, if nothing else, I hope that this site as a whole provides you with a bit of a wavering picture of the current trends in belief systems raging throughout the world, with some historical precedence offering partial explanations, and with a point-counterpoint opening to discussions that all of us really need to have, forgetting about the petty frustration and anger that people such as myself sometimes foolishly vent upon one another, and trying to understand, simply, a different point of view–not accepting it, not even reconciling it with your own staunch moral code(s), but learning to accept one another regardless of how stupid and worthless we ultimately deem one another to be.
Please check out the “Elsewhere” series, the “Excuses” series, several of the commentaries on the current crop of Democratic Presidential candidates, a number of the pieces of satirical nastiness on Donald Trump, and the very serious discussions I try to have on both animal cruelty and climate change, scattered throughout from nearly the very beginning in June of 2018. Thanks again, and until next weekend–
