Writing at the edge (DOG EAR)
Writing at the edge (DOG EAR)
t’s been a hard couple of months for me, facing everything from a loved-one’s passing to the storm of a century (with more of those yet to come) to the inanity of our President (really, is it even in doubt anymore?). At one point, doctors were testing me for a possible degenerative disease over a number of tense weeks (just Carpal-Tunnel, whew). And I’m getting older and not wiser, no, just creakier and more fragile. As mentioned in other pieces, I hurt myself jogging which has ended that for me. At least I’ve gotten the bike back under me. I still have that.
So in a world where a fuckbag can kill 59 and injure 527 people and it changes nothing, where burning coal is more important than our survivability on this planet, where people will support a disputable lie instead of the solid truth, it’s hard to keep your shit together. And over a couple of days, I really lost mine. I threw all my passion and belief behind my words and bashed everything from the our president to stupid FUV owners on Facebook (the popular place for ranting). I honed each word, eyed the line of each phrase and put every ounce of disgust I had into it.
Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard.
A couple of people checked in with me – a friend and a sibling. And that’s fine. Yeah, I’ve been under all this pressure lately and the idiotic world needed it thrown back into its collective ass. But one Facebook friend really came unglued by all this. Perhaps he supports that president of ours, perhaps he really hates the NFL player protests with more passion than he does the thought of police officers killing citizens in the streets. I don’t know which of my comments broke his frail camel’s back. All I know is that he wrote an indigent post about what a mean person “someone” was, how everything “that person” wrote was vile and nasty. Yeah, yeah, okay – I suspected it was me. But he left his post up for five days, just ranting about it and how he wanted to remain until “that person” saw it before unfriending them. On the day he threatened to do so, sure enough, I checked my friends count and it had clicked downward one notch.
Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass, you big baby.
At first, I was irked at the nature of that whole thing. Sure, you can bloativate about it but you didn’t think of posting me a cautionary message first? Or just quietly dumping me (which I have done to people whose grinding I have found odorous)? Annoying.
And then I looked at it as a writer. Sure, what I wrote pissed him off, but on the other hand, what I wrote pissed him off. In its own way, it was a complement to my writing, a show that my carefully chosen words had hit a nerve, that David’s stone had struck Goliath. In his theatrics, he actually confirmed that I can still move people to act (even if it’s to blow me out the Facebook airlock). So thank you for that affirmation, little angry man.
Still, having taken what my other friends to heart, I did tone it back down going forward. I started thinking of nice things to write about again. And after a particularly nice bicycle commute in, I described a few moments of the enjoyment that peddle-pushing can provide. Posted those up. And for that, a work friend responded that I wrote “beautifully”.
And this is what writing is about – sharing your emotions and moving people. It’s what we writers do.