Justification

Last night, Jason pointed me toward the blog of one of our old friends, Andrew (www.andrewolmsted.com). I spent about an hour reading through it. It made me glad for him; he does adore writing, and he's good at it. He was able to parlez his blog into writing a professional column for a newspaper, and he deserves it.

It also made me feel a little bad. Andrew was always about the political stuff, and his blog reflects that. I'm NOT about the political stuff -- I despise politics, and can only just bear to put on CNN a half hour a day -- and it makes me feel like maybe my writing is fluff. My blog, so far, is lots of stuff about family and farms and other idylls. My personal writing is fiction, and mostly the stuff of pulp magazines: science fiction and horror, spaceships, aliens and melodrama, zombies, witches, and ghosts.

I feel a little ashamed of myself. I'm not making a positive contribution, I'm not doing hard hitting reportage, I'm not addressing The Issues of the Day. I've got this 747 sized brain, why aren't I using it to make the world a better place? Or at least comment on the people who are trying to make the world a better place?

Well, I'll tell you true: addressing The Issues of the Day depresses me. Watching Hilary or Dubbya slander each other, reading about the latest atrocity humans commit against other humans, well, I'll skip it if it's all the same to you. I guess that makes me a lightweight. Some people enjoy that stuff; Andrew always has, and I can think of a few others who think politics is as addictive as cocaine. I ain't one of them; for me, it's the equivalent of herpes: a nasty, embarrassing disease that won't go away, and takes some of the fun out of life.

So how do I justify myself, and my lack of Public Contribution?

Frankly, I can't. I'm making my contribution on a much much smaller scale: by raising up a quartet of children the best I can, by being as good a friend as I know how to be, by telling the stories that are in me to tell.

Nobody is ever going to look at this blog and say that I made a difference in their lives by my writing. I live a lifestyle that is a hundred years out of date. All my talk of my extended family, my pastoral idylls, nobody normal lives like that anymore. Nobody wants to, and those few that do, most of them don't know (or care) that it's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

Not even my friends could argue that my little stories are Great Literature. Pure escapism is what I enjoy, and pure escapism is what I write. Life is hard sometimes, and certainly painful. My stories give me a place to hide for a while, a place where I can vicariously be beautiful and in control and what have you. Call me a coward, if you like, but there it is.

I can't justify my choice. It just is. Take it or leave it.