Sometimes

I just don't feel like writing. I'd rather do facebook (though I've unfollowed most people because that makes fb that much less time-sucking) and twitter and pinterest and TV and really anything but write. It's a sad, sad day when detailing the bathroom is more appealing than setting myself down in front of a keyboard and plunking out a few hundred words.

So instead of simply procrastinating unproductively away for another evening I'm procrastinating on my blog, which is at least a few words on a screen I can point to and say, hey, at least I'm writing something.

The world around me is depressing. There was yet another shooting in the US, this time of three police officers. Logically I know the US is still about as safe as it was while I was living there for, oh, most of my life, but watching it on the news it seems like a foreign and rather scary country. The social unrest is heart-wrenching, especially as we learn about the lives of the people who have been killed.

As much as I love writing (or rather, having written, let's be honest here) it seems frivolous in the face of such terrible goings on. Here I am, little sheltered, privileged white girl, and I'm writing about social unrest and prejudice and trying to link that to climate and environmental change in my story. Sometimes I look what I'm doing (or trying to do) and think what a colossal waste of time.

And yet, I am human, and part of being a human is telling stories. We make sense of the world through an emotional, narrative lens, and because of that the stories we tell ourselves and tell each other are important. Maybe what I'm doing isn't critical, or won't ever do anything serious to shape world or even local events; maybe all I will ever do is entertain someone for a few moments. With as well as I send things out it's possible the only person I'll ever entertain is myself. But then, I suppose that it's just as important for me to try and figure out the world around me, and if the process of writing is how I do it then it's a valuable thing. I don't ever have to publish a thing, I only have to open myself up to the process and to the empathy that writing challenges me to have and I've changed my little world, I hope in a good way. That alone has to be worth it.