this one's for you Irish Gumbo

This post was inspired by Irish Gumbo, one of the best bloggers writer/poet/photographers, I've run across on this here internet.

Normally, quite voracious in his style, and never one to be at a loss for words, a couple of weeks ago, he reported feeling "writers block" for some time. It seems to be going around to some of those I have been reading over the years.  Many of us (including me) are rehashing old posts and ideas, or just posting photos, but mainly using our blogs more to VENT, which is what they are FOR, but it just feels like more so, than in the past.  IG wrote that "I know this is a first-world problem, and it doesn't threaten to destabilize anything else in my life.  So I am grateful for it to be so." However, I think his malaise is pandemic in the first world, particularly the US among the middle to lower middle to poorer classes. I don't know anyone who isn't at least mildly "underwater" in some way, and I do not just mean monetarily. The news, the internet, television, everything conspires against us to make us feel like we MUST be productive, we MUST put notches in our belt, we MUST get better and bigger and richer. Pills to make you hard, drinks to wake you up, teas to calm your mind, undergarments to support what sags, causes to join to make you feel like you matter, cars and houses to buy to make you seem American.  

Frankly, while I am not joining a movement or anything, I am really starting to see that this is a trap "they" want us to languish in. And who is "they?"  The government, corporations, doctors, lawyers, politicians, people over thirty (of which I am one, I am afraid) - all those things and ideas and people the Occupy Movement is protesting.   YOU, nor I will never be GOOD enough, or THIN enough and certainly  not rich enough, but that won't prevent THEM for making us feel like we ought to at least TRY to be more gooder or thinner or richer.  NOT trying is un-American. You are a loser if you aren't prolific, or at least TRYING to be prolific.  

Well, fuck that.  I think we should all just let ourselves off the hook a little bit. Rather than being frugal with the heating oil, appreciate the coolness of the air bundled up in a comfy sweater. Instead of worrying where that next contract is going to come from, relish the silence of the phone. Instead of coveting your neighbors 42" flat panel TV, appreciate the stereo and those CDs you never play, but spent so much money on. Irish, don't beat yourself up because you have writers block, enjoy the transient nature of the blank sheet of paper, and its unfathomable potential.

When you (I) (we) least expect it, something will rise up. In YOU, Irish Gumbo, I have no doubt. and for the rest of us, I will just cling to my hope and convictions that light will shine, morning will come and ideas will flow.