Christmas Musings From The Editor
What you say when you can't say anything the way you want.
I’ve spent the last five weeks trying to write for all of you that read me. Five weeks of seeing something I want to write about and being unable to finish it. Five weeks of being unhappy with everything I’m producing. Five weeks of struggling for inspiration. This is seasonal depression, and it’s so very real.
I’ve written before about my mental health struggles. There’s something almost cruel, though, about how you can deal with something year-round, year after year, and then a certain month means you begin to be more miserable. Substantially reduced daylight hours, days without seeing the sun, sudden temperature shifts—all of this leads to reduced motivation, reduced productivity, and a struggle to simply get through each day without wanting to hide in bed.
I haven’t even gotten to the effect of world events on a struggling human with lifelong mental health issues.
ACA subsidies allowed to wither and die by a Christofascist cabal of lunatics in government. Rob and Michele Reiner murdered by their son. An antisemitic slaughter in Australia. A maniac’s vengeful armed assault on students at Brown University. The continued rise of a neo-Nazi secret police snatching citizens off the street. Vindictive prosecutions of protestors after having repeatedly assaulted them on camera. Economic decline. Independent media being deliberately strangled to death. A Supreme Court making up rules as they go to protect their flabby fascist-in-chief. The President being so amped up and thoroughly alone on Christmas Eve that he unleashed a tweetstorm of over 200 tweets (Truths, to use his stupid Truth Social name) that night into Christmas Day. TWO. HUNDRED.
That’s just in the last six weeks!
I cannot turn it off or look away. I am not a woman, but this article from The New Republic about the “Cassandras” of the Trump decade hit home. I, too, have spent the last decade endlessly speaking out about the dangers of electing Donald Trump, and then protecting him with the many powers of the presidency. The feeling of being consistently gaslit or ignored is that much harder for those with mental health challenges. The desire to choose flight, to run from the issues, becomes ever more acute. Why burden oneself with more depressing events? The answer, at least for me, is that to not know is too dangerous. Ignorance would not be bliss, because my desire to know wins out in every scenario. I cannot handle not knowing.
I’ve tried to find solace in other things I enjoy, such as reading history or biographies, because it does often work, and pulls me into another time where I can immerse myself in mental exercises: What would I be if I lived during _________? How would I have believed about ________? Consequently, this has also contributed to the lack of output on my behalf, because I’ve been on a tear. I’ve read the following since that last post I made: The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962 by Sir Max Hastings; This Is Only A Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War by David F. Krugler; The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy by Seymour Hersh; Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough; and Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate by Ken Hughes. I’ve now started on during my holiday break Masha Gessen’s seminal examination of Vladimir Putin from 2012, The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.
These aren’t small books, in most cases, and demonstrates why I’d have issues writing for having read that much, I hope.
In any case, I felt that an explanation was owed to all of you. I’m hoping that time away from work to pursue things I enjoy and help fight off the emotional weight of anxiety/depression will leave me renewed so I can resume my writing productively. I never wanted Letters From the Wasteland to be boring, and if I’d forced myself into producing content for the sake of it, it would be boring. I believe most people who write do so because they want their words to have meaning, to matter to others. I know I’ve lost some subscribers during this blackout period, and I appreciate everyone who has stuck with me, because it means I’ve done something worthwhile.
One just keeps putting one foot ahead of the other. Eventually it happens.