{"id":11292,"date":"2025-02-12T07:50:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T12:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11292"},"modified":"2026-01-04T13:20:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:20:01","slug":"why-the-long-hiatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11292","title":{"rendered":"Why the Long Hiatus?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Possibly one or two followers noticed my vacation from 4 x per week blog posting in the last few months. There were good reasons\u2014several of them. The flow was interrupted by out-of-town trips in October, November, and December (Austin, Louisville, and The Holiday Rust Belt Tour). Then there was the election, about which, what can one say that\u2019s actually useful and, preferably, healing (see below)? Then the Holidays, and we celebrate most of them, plus our wedding anniversary. The first six weeks of the year are busy with birthdays, and, next thing I knew, here it is, the week of February 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe I was in shock that in mid-October I finally got my stove fixed, which had been out of commission for one year, five months, and ten days, an enervating experience of itself. During that time, I learned a lot about my grocery store\u2019s prepared foods counter. Interesting. But now I have to cook again! I did managed to send out my quarterly newsletter, full of good reading and watching tips and my writing news. Are you a subscriber? Sign up here<\/a> and receive three award-winning short stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least during those months, an awful lot of reading got done. In its excellent November 18 issue, The New Yorker<\/em> compiled essays \u201creckoning with Donald Trump\u2019s return to power\u201d written by a slew of authors tackling various issues. Most helpful to me, personally, was the piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo<\/em>, George Saunders, titled \u201cConcerning the Underlying Disease<\/a>.\u201d So apt, because the schisms in our national psyche did not suddenly manifest on November 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The essay proposes various thought experiments on \u00a0circumstances in which we do (or could) mostly get along with people of differing views (Chiefs versus Eagles, for example). People today receive a Niagara of information that helps shape those views, but it\u2019s \u201cinformation of a peculiar sort, information that is powerful, and has been constructed far away, by people with agendas.\u201d This information is delivered invisibly, in a way to stoke feelings of belonging; it\u2019s addictive (doomscrolling); it\u2019s overwhelming. It\u2019s too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He asks whether it\u2019s possible that these \u201cheavily agenda-laced ideas from afar,\u201d as he calls them, have such power within us that we mistake them for our own<\/em> ideas, that they\u2019ve accumulated exaggerated importance in our lives? This importance may be disproportionate to the issue’s actual effect on us and irrespective of whether we can do anything about them. We\u2019ve come to feel, he believes, responsible for too much. It\u2019s paralyzing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the sake of my own mental health, I\u2019ve decided to calibrate how much I do feel responsible for. And what that is, exactly. I can\u2019t turn Gaza into the Riviera (even if I wanted to). I can\u2019t reunite immigrant families separated from their children (even though I would want to). I can\u2019t do any of the hundred things I can think of that actually make more sense to me than what the politicians are either doing or not doing. What I can<\/em> do is take a step back from other people\u2019s agendas and concentrate on simply being kind. To myself, to you, to strangers. In the long run, living by example may have some effect. That isn\u2019t to abandon all responsibility. It\u2019s just to assess it better. To care about the people affected, not the affecters (a word?). And to do what I actually can, however large or small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Possibly one or two followers noticed my vacation from 4 x per week blog posting in the last few months. There were good reasons\u2014several of them. The flow was interrupted by out-of-town trips in October, November, and December (Austin, Louisville, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-life","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2W8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11292"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11297,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11292\/revisions\/11297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}