Thoughts From The Side of The Road

I had Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again, playing as I puttered around my office/sewing room in an attempt to produce something creative. The scene where Lily James is sitting on the stage declaring she can’t sing about love if she didn’t feel it struck more than a few chords with me.

Not about love specifically. But the not being able to do something if you haven’t got the feeling behind it. Saying it’s been a rough couple of weeks would be pretty accurate. Extremely not conducive to accomplishing anything resembling creativity.

Forget creative. I don’t think I’ve accomplished much of anything other than essential life functions. Which I shouldn’t beat myself up over. Basic lifing is actually an accomplishment. We wouldn’t have made up the word “adulting” for it if it didn’t need its own distinction. But that little voice in my head – you know the really naggy one – has been singing a different tune. I’ve had constant reminders that I have a blog to perform for.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Whatever would we do without you?

I can’t just sit down and flip a switch inside me to turn on the creativity. If I could, well, I wouldn’t be sitting here rambling, hoping to find some sort of meaningful topic to talk about. Not to mention, being creative wouldn’t be a trait or a compliment if switches made it all possible.

How do you do something when you don’t feel it? Or don’t have the time to nurture it into being?

Hell if I know. I’m currently stuck in a parking lot waiting for an AAA assist, attempting to figure that out. How am I doing so far?

Don’t bother answering that. A flashy ABBA number is hard to compete with. There’s not a pair of bell-bottoms to be had in the backseat. And Lily James, I am not.

I’m stuck here with a good amount of pent up aggression and aggravation. Instead of looking for an upbeat topic, I’m going to turn to a bit of local news that rolled into my feed a few days ago.

A local news anchor received a voicemail that amounted to the audio file version of a flaming bag of dog poo on the front porch. In the voicemail, a female viewer fat-shamed the anchor and insulted the anchor’s choice of clothes. I’m not going to paraphrase them since they weren’t overly original.

Every woman who doesn’t have Twiggy’s body shape has heard most, if not all, of them during her lifetime. Those women who do have Twiggy’s body shape or close to it have consequently listened to the opposite criticisms. Not to mention the shit men decide to add to that pile of insecurities. Although, honestly, I think the majority of my body issues are rooted in criticism I’ve received from women, not men.

Anyway, this disgruntled viewer sat down and dedicated an hour to watch the news broadcast inclusive of local and national goings-on. Her big takeaway after getting updates on everything going on in the world? The news anchor’s wardrobe.

On a base and utterly superficial level, I’m jealous of this woman. Her life is uncomplicated enough to access a level of vanity I didn’t think possible during a pandemic. I mean, really. She sat through the COVID death toll update, a continued lack of justice across the country, a pulverized economy, and Trump’s latest tweet. But the news anchor’s hips were the main highlight of the broadcast. So much so, the woman felt the need to leave a hateful voicemail.

Obviously, I don’t have the full story. For all I know, a slew of people received equally entitled and disparaging messages from her. I’d say that I hope that’s true, but I don’t want anyone to be on the receiving end of that kind of criticism. And really, I don’t think she’s aiming her fury at senators, etc. over the current state of affairs.

That’s hard for me to say. This story has been knawing on me from the first read of the headline because I want to think better of people. Especially with a pandemic raging. Most certainly with the call for social change ringing so ardently. The world is on fire, begging for change and unity. And one woman’s hips are the only takeaway from sixty minutes of a news broadcast.

Yes, yes. This is a one-off story. A single, misguided person exhibiting bad behavior. But is it?

The same vanity and selfish disinterest in other people spurring that voicemail are on display everywhere in our country. The push back on wearing masks and ignoring social distancing. Visceral indignation at making space in history books for people so often labeled as “other.” It’s all the same thing.

I am not so well-read to be able to pull famous quotes out of my memory, nor am I so skilled to pull them out of Google. But I do believe Virginia Woolf had a quote about people finding a way to be superior to someone else by any means necessary. If it wasn’t Woolf, I apologize profusely to the progenitor of the quote I am thinking of. Something to do with achieving betterment through owning a famous painting or something like that.

If we are all so concerned with preserving our own self-importance, we aren’t going to get freaking anywhere. This era will go down like most of the rest before. Having maintained the status quo rather than venturing into the realm of something far more utopian. It is disheartening to think that continued mediocrity is what our generation is striving for.

Sorry, Nerd Girls, I went a bit gloomy there. But when you are waiting for AAA, I’m not sure there’s any other place. So, I guess I mean sorry, not sorry. The guy is here, so I am off. Let’s see if I can rally for Wednesday. If not, I’ll scroll through my camera roll to find something to entertain with. Stay safe and healthy.