SHAFTWAXER

I have officially gotten to “that point”.

It usually happens right about now, so it’s not entirely surprising. This is the middle of my busiest season with work, I have deadlines all around me, often taunting me in vile and offensive ways. It takes a lot of self discipline to be in business for yourself. Especially when you are the only employee and work out of your home. In my case, the machine I play on is also the one I’m expected to get all my work done on as well. After a while, sitting in front of the computer makes you a little batshit insane, and your mind starts to mess with you. Fortunately, I’m almost there. The end is in sight, and I know I will make it. And really, when looking at last year as a comparison, I’m doing so much better in so many ways. I think the quality of my work is decidedly higher, and I think that while I’m still under a heavy workload, I’m not nearly as pressed up with my back against the wall like last year. Most importantly, I think that the people I have in my personal life being more grounded gives me a stronger support system, something that makes life so much better.

But that’s not the point today. I was listening to The Al Franken Show last week, and one of their regular features is to have on Al’s childhood friend Mark Luther on who also happens to listen to Rush Limbaugh religiously. Mark was in absolutely rare form. Eventually he went off on this giant tirade about how liberals seem to be so angry, upset, or down about things, later going on to insinuate that we are always mad and that it would be a horrible way to live life.

Quite the opposite.

To be honest, sometimes I wish I didn’t have a conscience. To not care about anything aside from my family and friends, not see the shades of gray in between the black and white… Ignorance would make life easier because then I wouldn’t care about people I didn’t know. Hell, it would be easy to not care about people I do know.

Yes, I get angry about corruption and hearing about how people who can’t stand up for themselves are disenfranchised. I get angry when our administration seems to care more about a family dispute in Florida than the 20,000 who die every day because of poverty and poor living conditions. I get angry when we live in the only civilized country that doesn’t seem to have a basic universal health care system in place. I get angry knowing that corporations actively look to cut corners by polluting the ever living shit out of our planet and water supply just so they can increase profits by 2%. Yes, I get angry when you see people who are working hard to do nothing more than divide people in order to reduce the power they would have if they could work together. If I didn’t care, if I were ignorant of the bigger picture and were content to just sit idly on my balcony, turning my head away from anything that might be uncomfortable or difficult to face, it would be so much easier...

Unfortunately, I care.

It makes me happy to know that there are people out there fighting the good fight, trying to bring equality and power back to people. It makes me happy knowing that people are taking notice of the poverty in the third world. It makes me happy knowing that groups are speaking with their dollars as well as with their voices to get corporate America to give a shit about the environment. And really, with all the great work that some of these other people do, I don’t know if I could even put myself in the same paragraph as them, all I do is sit on my ass and plug away at my work on my computer while they are really making an honest difference.

And for that, I’m happy.