Suite Sixteen

As Steve Roper (via Allen Saunders) would say, and John Lennon would later adapt to use in "Beautiful Boy," life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. So I plan to be better at blogging, and life happens to me. But in the meantime I've kept up my online writing, posting (or post-dating) something new on this blog every day to maintain what few readers I have left, supplementing it with Facebook posts (I have yet to venture onto any of the apps used most frequently by generations after mine). I've also maintained my offline writing skills, finishing a 5-page comic book story based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream" which Robin will be illustrating, as well as helping my fellow admin assistants at work whose communication expertise tends to be more verbal than written, particularly when filling out competency self-assessments. It's gratifying and something of a relief to know I can still call upon these talents when asked to, but my concentration on my job at work and on my husband and cat (and TV, and Facebook games, and other things that relax me after a day's work) wreaks a bit of havoc on my self-motivation. Not to mention it was far easier (at least for 42-year-old me) to rant against the idiot son of an asshole in 2002 than it is to weigh in against the constant lying, grifting, bigotry and hatred, and general treason being committed by the horrid excuse for a human currently occupying the White House and his cronies. I mean, it was exhausting just writing that sentence. So yeah, I continue to be politically aware and keep up with whose who, like me, still use the longform blog as their primary means of expression, and as of this moment I'm all caught up with everyone I still follow except for Kevin Drum (75 posts to go) and Digby (yikes, about 147 posts to go). I do hope blogging as a means of online expression continues to stick around. If it does, I will too. See you next September 7 for Pen-Elayne's 17th blogiversary.