File your complaints here.....

I am pretty sure this blog entry is going to be nothing but bitching. If you are into that kind of thing, welcome. If you are just curious as to what kind of thing gets under my skin, please stay. If you are looking for something to use against me in the future, grab a seat.

I should start with this thing we all have to deal with: money. As we all know, Congress fucked around with the debt ceiling for far too long, achieved very little, and showed themselves to be about as ineffective as possible. Unemployment is still hovering just over 9%. The S&P downgraded its credit rating for US debt. While I was never a big fan of the government, I always trusted that things would work out, somehow, even if they worked out a different way than I would have liked. I want to believe that people are rational and can engage in reasoned discourse to find a solution. But no. There is no more reasoned discourse or rational acts. Actual and direct damage is being done. I don't think there is a single person who hasn't been affected. I know that all the time I spent busting my ass to save my pennies to invest and save and have something to retire with....well, it was all a waste of time. Thousands of dollars just disappear over night. The markets are false. It's like a game, only suddenly we realize we have been talking about real money and not the Monopoly version. It's all so abstract until you realize how much actual suffering is going on in the world because of Tea Party ideology or conservative Republican rhetoric or liberal everyone gets a blue ribbon or the outdated and false democratic majority rule bullshit. It's all a bunch of crap. There is no direct say in how we are governed. But that is nothing new. It's all a matter of hoping that no one fucks anything up too badly.

There is plenty more I could say about that, but I guess it's time to take this to a more personal level. I've been pretty reclusive over the last few years. I will go to work and see people and chat and joke and do all the things people do at work, and I will run errands and chat with people in the store. But then I will make it to my house, like I finally crossed the finish line, and all that social ability, all the chattiness and smiley a/t will slowly dissolve and I would find myself avoiding eye contact with my next door neighbor. I will intentionally leave my phone, on vibrate, somewhere where I won't see it for hours. I will sit on my back porch and slowly feel some degree of relief, even though I didn't realize I needed it. Many times when I am sitting there I wonder what is wrong with me, what made me this way...I feel like something must be wrong with me because I seem so unwilling to participate in the world at large, and everyone else seems to want to do exactly that. At the same time, I really do love people. I love having genuine connections with people, and I never get around to telling anyone how much it means to me. I do best one on one. Groups of people seem almost inhuman to me. But I can pretend. I can play along and do all the things that people expect. I can laugh on key. But....all I will be thinking about is my quiet back porch, crickets, and my dog.

This is probably entirely too personal for a blog, but it doesn't really matter.