I started this post a month ago and never finished it.
I didn't get beyond one sentence: I will be honest- I do not particularly like blogging.
In conclusion:
I prefer writing fiction. I don't like to present myself as anything like a "talking head" or an "internet personality." I despise especially the latter and have not the enthusiasm for presenting as one that it would require to succeed. Advice I get goes "You have to have a blog" as practically a prerequisite for getting published.
But I've got a contract and my novels are in the editing process. So I will get published regardless of whether or not I make another blog post. Which I will do, to promote the book, but I should explain the factors that have led to this blog being rather inactive rather than the firebrand that was promised in the beginning.
The things I would want to say on a blog, that I once could say, now have much more serious consequences, such as loss of job or federal surveillance, or court convictions. The Right Wing is extremely litigious. I don't want to lose my job (where I help a lot of people who otherwise don't have support) or by surveilled or imprisoned by the Trump Government for speaking truths that are equally as personal as they are political. I also work in a rumor mill (E.G. a hospital) where everyone finds out everything about everyone else. My job puts me in a very visible position in which I need to avoid the appearance of being "political" at all. And while my writing is certainly "political" or at least, politically charged, I prefer writing fiction because I can speak less like a know-it-all through different characters with different perspectives (which is how all three of my novels are written, with alternating perspectives).
As stated, I dislike internet personalities and social media. What social media presence I do have is going to be handled by a third party for the remainder of my career as a writer. This third party is my sister and her girlfriend. They have a head for doing that and not getting dragged down into the muck, which is an ability I lack.
It's not that I will never make another blog post again. I will plug the books. I will plug appearances. I will continue to attempt to use this blog to gain publicity for my written work. But there are a lot of reasons why I haven't been using it to go on rants about current events, and these reasons are far from apathy. I care deeply about the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, about racial and gender injustice under Trump's regime, about the dystopian rise of LLMs, the dystopian rise of Christian Nationalism, and other aspects of the "whole" material struggle for liberation. But I don't feel motivated to rant online.
I am doing what I can by trying to be the best social worker I can be (which is harder than it sounds).
Really, my day-to-day is patient-centered and while mental health is a worthy subject I will consider using this blog to discuss, most of what I deal with is covered under HIPAA and I am not able to talk about it. I also don't particularly want to get into the weeds of why things are done and how they are done at the hospital where I work, for the same reasons I don't want to, for example, make a post telling how I really feel about Charlie Kirk's assassination, for example. That falls into the job "Not wanting to lose my job" category.
And if that makes me a bad anarchist, I don't really care, because I am just trying to be the best social worker I can be, and that requires a lot of personal sacrifice. Key word there is "personal," so that's a no-go area for blogging, too, I guess.
I guess there's just not much I would want to blog about these days. There are enough other voices out there already speaking truth to power about the things I care passionately about.
Lately, I've been listening to a lot of WHYY at work. My officemate John seems to appreciate it. That's the public broadcast news station in the Philly area. I am mourning the loss of Knowledge Fight from my life, as the Knowledge Fighters Dan and Jordan have hung up their gloves and ended their podcast. I listen to a lot of podcasts generally. Mostly comedy podcasts. I am trying to maintain a healthy media diet.
Blogs are not part of that healthy media diet. Any more than Twitter (which I refuse to call "X"), facebook, or whatever is big now. I don't really see a return to form for this blog. It's not an intentional toning down. Just, a redirection of energy.
