That title is dual purpose. In one sense, it has been six months and six days since I posted anything to this blog, so I am attempting to catch you up on what is going on in my life and the world (from my perspective). The other purpose is more disheartening, as I place a giant question mark at the end of that title and wonder in these paragraphs what is going on in our world. I thought 2023 was a crazy, depressing, unpredictable year, but its got nothing on 2024.
Before we dive into the insanity, I’ll catch you up quickly on what is going on with me. In January, I had surgery to treat my cancer, and my first tests post-surgery were encouraging. Of course, I am now obligated to repeat these tests every six months or so to make sure I remain a cancer survivor. I’m healing, but I predict I have several months to go before I arrive at what I believe to be normal (or close to normal).
Which brings me to explaining my new everyday prayer. Every morning, I wake and immediately pray for strength, patience, and focus. I generally receive the strength part, sometimes after effort. Many mornings I find myself trying to figure out a way to simply go back to bed, at least briefly. This comes and goes, with no real rhyme or reason that I can sense.
Patience is another story. Just like the worn-out saying, I want patience and I want it now. So many things do not just wear on my patience, but rip it away in seconds. Bad drivers on the way to work, persistent salesmen during the course of my workday, tense communications with friends and family, the inability to sit down and write anything (this missive is taking everything I have right now) and many other small, insignificant, obstacles all contribute to sudden fits of anger, frustration, and outright rage. I’m still working on patience and still praying for it.
Focus comes and goes. I have good days and bad days. Some days I can’t concentrate on any given task for more than five minutes, other days I can grind away at an endeavor for hours on end. I long for the days when I had a modicum of control over my attention and dedication. I don’t know if my lack of focus is some oddball side effect of my surgery (along with my still slightly numb fingers) or it is associated with aging in general, but it does seem to have intensified since my surgery. Although my inability to simply sit down and write has persisted since my mom passed in March of last year. This post is the most I have written in one sitting since (…checks website) Christmas Eve of last year. I should be pleased, as it represents progress. But it is probably fleeting.
Enough about my prayers for myself. I also lift prayers for our nation and world, although these must change periodically, as it seems things are just getting crazier. We have rampant antisemitism on our college campuses and elsewhere in this nation. That was not on my bingo card for 2024, although it should have been based on the events immediately following the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel.
I knew this election year promised a lot of crazy, but to watch the president of the United States display his mental decline repeatedly, but most spectacularly and unequivocally during a debate with his political rival for the presidency, all while the White House and the main stream media assured us he was “sharp as a tack” when out of camera range has been shocking, but not surprising.
If you are a “normie” (a person who believes what they see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears, and can tell the difference between a man and a woman) you probably don’t mistrust or dislike the main stream media enough. I encourage you to get your news from places other than CNN, MSNBC, ABC, the New York Times, Washington Post and other compromised media outlets. This presidential campaign season has been a freight train of lies, exaggerations, and epic gaslighting. Don’t take my word for it…look into it yourself.
There’s more to discuss, but I am on my last strand of patience as I write this sentence. Maybe I will follow up soon. We’ll see.