Apologia

i do need to apologize.

For about two weeks, i have not been very active in posting anything here, one or two maybe. My Facebook posts have been mostly sharing memories from previous Facebook posts.

i have been remiss.

There are two overriding reasons, among several other minor ones, for my absence.

The first is this book i’m working to publish. For over thirty years, Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings was a distant goal to work on when i was ready and put down when gathering information or the information i knew i would have to include just stopped me for awhile. i also got diverted with other jobs, personal relationships, other ideas for books, home projects, honey-do’s — i’ve discovered there is a major difference between “home projects” and “honey-do’s — other columns and posts, and, of course, golf.

Then i made it to the last couple of chapters for completion of the first draft. i’m on a roll, into it. Working almost a full workday five or six days a week, and some on the other day. The first draft is finished. The hard work is beginning.

i now have a job. Been a while. Love it. Gives me purpose. So my first priority for some time has been and will be the book. i will attempt to get partially back in the groove and with posts. But the book will be first and i will get to all of that other stuff after working on the book if the old man has any energy left.

The second reason is i am too sad. Social media, at least the one i use, Facebook, is really making me sad — i never was interested in Tweeting on Twitter because after all i cannot say or write the phrase in the beginning of this sentence without laughing out loud, and i don’t think i’ve said anything meaningful in 144 characters or less since i got out of high school (“I do” being an exception). Intelligent caring people i know are using Facebook to copy and paste baseless claims, or make their own up, fomenting division, throwing rocks at those they assume are their opposition, making bad jokes, and inflammatory statements because…? Maybe it makes them feel good. They haven’t changed anyone’s mind yet that i know of. Certainly not mine, and when i’ve joined the fray, i haven’t changed anyone’s mind either, that i know of. And dammit, i’m not talking about a particular group. It’s all of us using social media to be antisocial to anyone who doesn’t agree with us. Why are we doing this to each other?

Sad.

So once again, i am considering how to operate in this toxic climate of social media. There are good folks out there i would like to keep in my daily scope of things beyond the few i would without social media. i like to hear about someone’s good day, significant accomplishments, wife, husband, children, grandchildren. i like to see memories of the past. i want to know when someone for whom i care is ill, has family not doing well, and even that unavoidable thing called dying.

But it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wheat is grossly outnumbered and the chaff keeps bludgeoning me with direct or indirect hate and fear.

So i’m working on it.

i’m still gonna be around on Facebook and with my posts, and i will get to responding to all the comments on my stuff, but is likely i will not be as regular and there will be times i might just disappear for a while.

i wanted you to know it ain’t (necessarily) you, babe.

I do apologize.

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