Finding Ideas in the Time Suck Called Facebook

It’s been so long since I last posted to my blog, I feel as though I need one of those WordPress introductions—Hello World!—that appear on your brand spanking new blog.

This year I’ve been out of ideas, out of practice, and out of sorts for a good long spell. Some is self-inflicted (blocks, procrastination, self-criticism) and some rooted in external pressures—translation: the ennui felt when you are waiting for a lawsuit to resolve. A lawsuit that has dragged on now for just over eight years. It is still ongoing so I am not elaborating here, only justifying myself, I guess. But the real issue is: I need to write. I need to keep my hand fluid and my mind flexed so I don’t rust like Dorothy’s Tin Man or my brain turn to straw like that other guy.

Facebook has not helped.

Facebook is a ginormous time suck. Not sure, but the slang term “time suck” might have actually originated from hanging out on Facebook. Nevertheless, the other day I was looking at people’s Throwback Thursday photos and silently bemoaning the fact that I could not waste even more time rifling through old photos to share with virtual strangers. All my photos—there aren’t many, anyway—are in a Portland, Oregon, storage unit. Why? Because things mold here and I do not want to lose them.

Then I had a #TBT thought.

I am uniquely qualified to share our “before and after” experiences from this southern Caribbean coastline. A. and I moved here long before it is what it is now, long before there were even many expats living here. And there are many old photos online.

So starting this week, I am making a new run at the blog: Before and After along the Caribe Sur; historical research for my brain, writing for my hand (and head).

In the meantime, A. and I pray for the legal situation to resolve in our favor. I try for specific rather than Delphic prayers. Some say Pythia’s predictions were ambiguously phrased to show her in a good light regardless of the outcome. And because the prediction was oral, not written, there was no way of knowing where essential punctuation was placed in something like: “Go. Return. Not die in war.” or was it: “Go. Return not; die in war.”

Yah, I want our supplications finite.