As has been the case since 2015, I’m having a little difficulty writing, mostly because of current events. It takes me longer to read the news, and longer to process it.

But there were also things going on in my personal life that made everything more difficult.

On top of real-life-outside escalating and dialing it up to 11, I was unemployed for a stretch leading into a much longer period of being severely underemployed, and I had to move twice in 10 months. I used to live in an intown neighborhood where I could walk to grocery stores & restaurants with easy access to transit when I needed it. Now I live out in the suburbs where I can actually afford* rent.

(*sort of) (I still feel like I’m being gouged by a cartel of local landlords)

So. I have felt a bit lost, “at sea”, and that’s even before you add on the successive annual burning of ever larger dumpsters as the splinter timeline we’re all stuck in attempts to single-handedly prove a multiverse by presenting a reality so ridiculous that this can’t be the ‘real’ real.

I can’t disengage from the world and just live in my bubble (even if it’s a comfortable little bubble with books and tea and beer, occasionally I have to go outside to resupply all three). Politics seems to have taken over my poor Twitter account, but I don’t want politics and activism to take over my life. I certainly don’t want to spend (additional) hours every day soaking up just how terrible the world is to then distill and bottle it all up in blog posts. So this likely won’t end up as a political blog, even if my interests—like urbanism, affordable housing, and best uses for public spaces—occasionally intersect.

So what do I write about?

A blog about entertainments and fan-stuff seems a bit… Well, what’s the analogy to use here? Whistling past graveyards? Fiddling while Rome burns? A frog just trying to enjoy his hot tub? But even if some people find it ‘inappropriate’, we have to hold onto the things that make us happy, the ‘normal’ things. We can celebrate works that are creative. We can have a little fun. So maybe my thoughts on comics and games and movies are still relevant, and still worth sharing.

What can I give the rest of you, at this moment, that will help? And is that ‘thing’ or topic or thesis (whatever it ends up being) within my means and my skills?

All questions rhetorical. Or more accurately, they’re questions I need to find the answer to myself

For the time being I’ll be continuing the stream-of-consciousness self-examination style for a bit as I get back into the habit of daily writing for public consumption. I’ll probably also start something longer (longer than 500 words anyway) and if that takes a shape I like I might even share. And I suppose if I can’t overcome either the writer’s block or the doubt, if nothing else maybe I’ll have more to say about that.