Articles by Jamie DeBree

Nov 18 2024

Rewiring: One Door at a Time

Author: Jamie DeBree

I wrote my first novel 250 words at a time, during commercial breaks while watching TV in the evenings. I used to put puzzles together on a regular basis, working on them for a few hours every Saturday, and then putting it away for the next week. Those were the days when TV was only live, and you had to wait a week between episodes to find out what happened next, and wait through 15 minutes of disbursed commercial breaks to get through 45 minutes of programming.

Information was starting to be available online, but it still took time to dial into the internet, and then electronic traffic was slower, so clicking a link or typing in an address meant waiting a few minutes each time for the forum or rudimentary website to load (much longer for an image). Call waiting was barely a thing, and cell phones just starting to be accessible, so making a call still generally had to wait until you were somewhere you could either borrow or pay to use a telephone, or until you got home or to work.

The commonality in all of this is the patience required simply to move through the average day. One simply had to be patient and persistent to get things done. There was no binging a whole season of a show at a time, at least not until the season was completely finished, after which you could buy the whole set if you really wanted to. No calling up someone while you’re out shopping, or texting someone instead of waiting to talk to them when they (or you) get home. No typing in a query to Google and instantly getting page after page of information back before you can even blink.

These days, everything is faster and more efficient, but it’s also really changed my expectations not only of the world around me, but of the demands I place on myself – and the latter is not necessarily for the better. My attention span has shortened, and my persistence along with it. I don’t like that about myself, but it’s a difficult thing to rewire the brain, especially when the entire world is screaming that you have to work faster, faster, faster. That slowing down and pacing yourself is lazy, inefficient, and unproductive.

However, I really believe that constant go go go/faster faster faster attitude is unhealthy, stressful, and ultimately less productive than taking a slower, more measured approach. So I am working to rewire my brain. Focusing on measured, steady progress, rather than how many words I can write in 15 minutes, or how much cleaning I can get done in one hour. Working on creating maintainable routines, rather than whirlwind frantic “sessions” that burn me out by the end.

I’ve been writing a lot more lately. Working at my writing desk, on my Freewrite without distractions, and even Election night, I managed to get around 400 words in before bed. I’m working on short drafts at the moment – four flash fiction drafts that I really want to finish before the end of the month. I have two done, and by the end of the week when this post goes up, I will probably have finished a third. I’m using these to create the routine, and then I’ll go back to working on my main novel drafts three nights per week, and short fiction one night per week. I’m not striving for specific word counts, just writing for a set time, and the words I get down are the words I get down. I find it rather calming, not worrying about how much I get done. It puts the fun back in the activity, and gives me a satisfying sense of relaxation late in the evening before I plan out the next day and read a little before bed.

I’m also working on my deeper cleaning skills, one kitchen cabinet door at a time. Every night before writing time, I clean the kitchen. And now, at the tail end of that when I’m wiping down my counters, I wipe down one (just one) cabinet door. It’s actually hard to stop at one, because it’s been so long since they were clean, and I just want to rush through and clean them all at once, and then start my “one nightly” routine, but the thing that motivates me to keep going right now is that the next one is still visibly dirty. That dirt is what drives me nuts (and has been for months), but it’s also what’s driving me to clean a door every night, instead of being lazy and skipping if I just don’t feel like it or am in a hurry or whatever.

So I’ll continue to stop myself after just one, and by the time I finish going all the way around my kitchen, I’ll have cleaned a door a day for nearly 22 days. That should be enough time to cement the routine into my nightly muscle memory, and after that, it should be easy to just continue wiping down a door every night, and keeping them much cleaner than they have been in years.

I’m employing this pacing wherever I can – at work, to my piles of paper that need to be dealt with at home, other cleaning tasks, etc. Training my brain to take things once piece at a time, and not rushing to do too many things at once, but rather to focus on what I’m doing *at that moment*, and creating routines wherever possible. I’ve really noticed a shift over the last few weeks in my stress levels (for the better), and contrary to what it seems like, I’m actually getting more done, rather than less.

Efficiency is not a bad thing, and I do use tools whenever I can to make my life easier and get things done more quickly. But patience and persistence are “life skills” I was starting to lose, and I’m glad I decided to work on developing them again.

Now if I can just apply the same principle to getting my blog posted weekly and a monthly newsletter going again, I’ll feel *really* accomplished.

One other thing – I do have an account on Bluesky (since it seems that’s the new Twitter, and it does feel like “the old days”). Feel free to follow me at jamiedebreemt.bsky.social. I’m currently just posting a daily writing word in the morning, followed by a bit of micro-fiction using that word at night (I’ll probably start posting these on FB as well), but you never know. I may post something witty at some point. Odds are good if you don’t post a lot of political stuff, I’ll probably follow you back, too.

That’s it! Until next time,

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Oct 30 2024

Raking up the Clutter

Author: Jamie DeBree

Halloween is tomorrow, and later today (when it warms up a bit – it’s still only 30f degrees out there), I’ll be hauling the bulk of our decor upstairs and putting a decent amount of it out in the yard (the expensive stuff waits until tomorrow, for obvious reasons).

I took today, tomorrow, and Friday off work specifically so I could “do” Halloween in an organized, controlled manner rather than trying to do it all in a few hours on the day and then dropping it all back in the basement after to be put away “when I get around to it” (or rather, whenever I want my workout space back). I am not a good housekeeper (something I’m trying to remedy), but I do prefer things to be organized. The clutter in our house has gotten way out of control, so I’m on a mission at the moment to declutter and organize our stuff & spaces not only for better usability, but also for peace of mind.

To start, last weekend, I spent some time cleaning off my writing desk. It’s a small thing, and since I still had my computer desk to use, seemingly unimportant, but my writing time is from 11:30pm to midnight (or a little after if I’m on a roll), which is late by any standards, and well past when I’ve used up most of my energy for making good decisions.

So if I sit at my laptop that late, and a random question pops into my head, or an email notification pops up, I’m highly likely to go do a “quick google search”, or just “peek at” my email. And in my weary mental state, I’m unlikely to either start writing or get back to writing after that, because consuming is less work than creating.

However, if I sit down at my writing desk, with a non-internet connected device (I like my Freewrite Traveler), it becomes more work to get distracted than to just write. The nights I was writing on my laptop, I averaged around 200 – 300 words per night with the visual “noise” of writing in that space. This week, on my Freewrite at the writing desk, I’ve been averaging between 400-600 words, so I doubled my output just by giving myself a less distracting environment.

This is just the start of my decluttering project. I’ve been in a pretty serious mental funk for the better part of October, dealing with changes at work that are leaving me mentally exhausted at the end of the day, and then coming home & just not making good decisions (lots of impulse late-night internet shopping, for example). When I sat down & really thought it through, I realized that the physical clutter in my house was making my metal clutter worse, and really affecting my ability to recuperate from the day, much less do anything creative at all.

Hence the mission to clear the clutter, clean up the mess – and do it in a way that is maintainable over the long run. I have a tendency when I get in these moods to spend large chunks of time doing a massive cleanout, but not having any way to maintain that space over the long term. This time, I’m deliberately forcing myself to slow down, and figure out maintenance strategies *while I’m decluttering* so I’m more likely to keep up with them when the space is decluttered and usable again.

More on that later, but this is long enough,the sun is shining, and it’s time to get some movement in (I have fat to “declutter” as well). A few trips up from the basement with Halloween props should get the blood flowing nicely, methinks!

Until next time,

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Oct 04 2024

Bring on the Coffins!

Author: Jamie DeBree

Apparently, everyone in my neighborhood is more than ready for Halloween this year. The last day of September out walking with the dogs, I saw a few pumpkins and such popping up, but when the calendar flipped over to October, it’s like someone flipped a switch, and we have skeletons and lights and pumpkins all over!

It’s fun, truly. We always used to be the first on our bloc̃k to decorate, and now we’re behind the curve already just four days in. But I do know what our theme is this year, and it involves a lot of crafty stuff (because I’m pretty sick of spending money and just don’t feel like buying more stuff), so we’ll be getting started on that soon.

Tomorrow, Ace Hardware has a “bucket sale” going where everything you can fit in one of their 5 gallon buckets is 20 percent off, and I need a lot of black duct tape and spray paint, so, that will definitely happen. I may try to get some lights up this weekend too – just depends on how much time I have.

Once upon a time, I had a blog for our “Scaryview Cemetery”. It was on blogger and I just sort of abandoned it after 2013, posting our annual pictures on Instagram & Facebook instead. But it’s been sitting there all this time, and last weekend, I finally bought the “real” domain for it, and after far too much annoying issues to deal with, I moved it to my own web host.

So if you want to check out our past projects, or follow along as I build props (probably clumsily) for this year, head over to https://scaryviewcemetery.com. If I have time, I’ll post some past pics there too, and try to post weekly as our cemetery comes back to life this year.

As for the writing and newsletter…well. Life has gotten in the way again, as it tends to do. It is very difficult some days to be creative and motivated after a work day requiring a lot of intense focus, and I tend to overestimate my own energy. But, I’m not giving up. I’ll find my flow even around the day job…eventually.

That’s all for this week! Until next time,

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Sep 27 2024

Do You Ever Forget to Feed Your Brain?

Author: Jamie DeBree

The leaves on our hibiscus plants are starting to turn, and I think our maple tree is only a week or so behind. I feel like I’m “changing colors” a bit this fall too, trying to slough off some of the old, dead things that have been hindering forward movement. Cleaning out things in my house that don’t “give me joy”, scrubbing the dirt off things that I’ve neglected, and taking care of what I already have are all part of this “phase”, and while other people tend to get motivated to “clean house” in the spring, Fall tends to be my season of reflection, renewal and clearing out the chaff.

“Moderation” is often difficult for me (and I realize that’s a privilege many people don’t have, but I have worked very hard to be where I’m at). I have a hard time not indulging in more food, more plants, more pets, more, more, more…and I’m trying to learn better moderation, not just because I think it’s healthier, mentally (which it is, certainly, and also less expensive), but because the more things I have to take care of, the less enjoyment I get from the things I have, because they all require time and energy. The more physical weight I carry, the less agile I am, and the more pain I have to deal with, plus my chances of developing worse diseases/conditions are higher, which is stressful for me. For my last blood test, I was pre-diabetic, and next year when I turn 50 is the year the cancer gene tends to get triggered for people in my family.

So along with moderating my purchasing and overall consumption of “things”, I’m “moderating” my calories and food intake (menopause has made this more difficult than it used to be), and while I’m figuring that out, I’m hungrier than normal. Once I get my nutrition more balanced, it will be easier, but when the brain is hungry, willpower and motivation tend to be a lot more difficult. I’m reminded a lot lately that nutrition, not just what we eat but when we eat it, has a *lot* to do with how we think. Of course that means it’s not all that easy to make that shift because I’m fighting brain fog and motivational issues while in transition, but I think it’ll be worth it for the long term.

The writing has been difficult this week, suffice it to say. I didn’t realize why until I was writing an email and whining about it earlier, and it hit me that my energy was slumping during my writing time because of this nutritional shift I’m making, and the obvious answer is to make sure I get a small “brain-food” snack after my nightly walk to give my brain the energy to actually work a little more before bed. Walnuts are a very healthy brain-food, so I think a few of those will do nicely. If it works, I’ll have a fall-themed flash story to post here early next week.

I often forget just how much taking care of the body affects how the brain itself works, in a very real and physical way. I get frustrated when I’m too tired, or stressed or whatever to get what I want to get done, done, but so much of that energy and motivational slumping could/can be fixed by just tweaking what I’m eating and when. Seems like that would probably apply to most humans, eh?

Are you making sure your brain gets the nutrition it needs? And are you turning over any “leaves” this fall?

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Sep 13 2024

A Fundamental Shift for Fall

Author: Jamie DeBree

Happy Friday the 13th!

Fall is fast approaching, and with it, vacation days that will be spent on publishing tasks rather than traveling, which I’m looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed the change of pace this summer, though a lot was getting prepared, but I’m somewhat relieved to go back to not trying to fit travel into our weeks along with everything else. We may end up taking another short trip before winter, but nothing to long or intensive.

Last weekend while struggling to get everything done even though I was on a break from making dog food, I finally admitted to myself that I’ve taken on too many responsibilities here at home, and I need to either give myself more time to deal with them, or dispense with some of them. This after buying two more fish (pretty platies – pictured above) for one of my aquariums because I’d planned to merge it with the other large one, but I’m definitely not going to have the time or money to do that until early next year, and I didn’t want to look at a mostly-but-not-quite empty tank for the next six months (there were/are several khuli loaches in there, but they spend most of their time in the sand).

It’s difficult to impossible to decide what to give up. I love my aquariums, my plants (Do I need so many? No. But can I decide which ones to get rid of? Also no.), my writing, crafting, and while I don’t love cleaning so much, I need to do more of that, just because it needs to be done.

So, I’m working on figuring out how to spread things out more over the week, and do little bits every day instead of trying to do everything on the weekends. It’s definitely a process, but I think that will allow me to keep what I have, at least, and if I adjust my weekend sleep schedule to be more “normal” (*sad sigh*), I should have more time for writing and crafting things on the weekends, when I need bigger blocks of time for those things.

It also occurred to me last weekend when I was thinking about all of this, that a major theme of my life is trying to organize everything enough that I can do all the things I love, and perhaps that should have a larger focus in the books I write (or some of them, anyways). I know I’m not the only person who struggles with this, so it would be a relatable thing for readers, and it’s what I know and am constantly thinking about.

Perhaps this will be the next series idea I’ve been looking for? I’ll play with it a bit this weekend, and see what shakes out.

The Magpie novel is coming along well, and Alex hasn’t started the spooky story yet, so we should both probably keep/get moving on those. And I really want to get the print formatting done for Alex’s Death by Veggies collection for an October release. So that’s what we’re working on at the moment in publishing.

And that’s all I’ve got for this week. Until next time,

That’s it for this week! If you have a favorite thing to share, or want to recommend a book, TV show, video or podcast, comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

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Sep 03 2024

Showers Are a Peculiar Sort of Magic

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve loved long showers since I was a kid (much to the chagrin of my parents, as you might imagine). The average time I need underneath that warm, inspirational spray is twenty to thirty minutes, and while I might try to be quicker if I have to, I’ll often postpone a shower just so I can take a properly long one.

During the week, I do take a couple of quick “wash & shave” showers before work (no wet-hair involved), but even on those days, I have an alarm set on my watch for the time I need to be out, and I’ll push those 15 minutes every single time.

The thing is, my mind relaxes in the shower, and it’s one of the few places on earth that no one bugs me. I have ideas, and they just sort of explode in that warm, humid cocoon of steam. My brain goes a hundred miles a minute, and I often solve problems, make plans, plot stories, plot series, get to know characters, and I come out with both a laundry list of ideas and at least a half-formed plan on how I’m going to work on all of them.

It’s exciting, exhilarating, and I wish I could go to bed at night with the same enthusiasm (and results). This weekend, I took a shower, and came out with a whole plan for how to incorporate some flash stories in with a Christmas idea I had earlier, and also some epiphanies into my current drafts and characters. It was fantastic, and I’m excited to get to work on making those ideas reality.

Are your showers inspirational and fun? If not, where do you go, or what activity inspires you in a way that nothing else can?

Until next week,

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Aug 16 2024

Overthinking Overthinking

Author: Jamie DeBree

Hi! I’m Jamie, and I’m an “overthinker”.

It sounds like it should be some rare, mysterious ailment, doesn’t it? It’s not, of course…just ask any anxious or control-freak person out there, and they’ll tell you. Why do we tend to overthink things? I can’t answer for anyone else, but in my case it’s simply fear. Not really fear that the worst might happen (because trust me, I have a plan of some sort for that), but more than one of the myriad smaller things that require more time and effort (and money, sometimes) to resolve will spin out of control.

This actually serves me well at work, where testing and retesting and thinking and thinking again makes all the tech I deal with run better and I end up with less technical “misses” that result in panic-type situations (it happens, and it always will on occasion, but it’s the exception rather than the norm).

Not so much at home, where the top two things noodling around in my head are getting the van ready for our first overnight trip next week, and what to do with the dogs while we’re gone. The van is already way, way over-provisioned for the one-night trip we have planned, and my parents will be coming over to watch the dogs for us, but the details are spinning about the dogs and the fact that I’m very much a night person (it’s nearly midnight as I write this), and my dogs are used to that schedule, but my Mom is not.

I also get up to feed the dogs around 6:30am every morning (I go back to bed on the weekends), which is not something my Dad, who is a night person, would appreciate having to do. My dilemma is whether to have the morning person stay over and possibly have to let Athena out at 1am (when I’m normally headed to bed), or have the night person stay over to make sure they get their late-night snack and another potty break, but also have to get up at 6:30am the next morning to give the dogs breakfast too?

Or should I ask my dad to cover the late-night snack/potty break, not have either of the parents sleep over, and have my mom cover the breakfast shift.

I’ve been going round and round about this in my head, and still haven’t come to a decision, because the consequences of getting it wrong could be nothing, or they could be torn up couch cushions & doors, to say the least.

The truth is, both schedules will probably work just fine, and I just need to accept that I can’t control everything and I am really looking forward to getting out for another drive, some more bookstore shopping (and a museum!), Pokemon in different places, and our first night spent in the van. Oddly enough, the one thing I don’t overthink (and probably should) is travel (though as I mentioned, the van is over-provisioned just because we both like our creature-comforts).

Are you an overthinker? Is it situational, or general? What do you do to talk yourself out of or around it (if anything)?

We are leaving Thursday and back Friday, so there probably won’t be a post next week, but after that, I think it will be time to settle into a more set routine. And I’ve figured out my blockage with my Magpie heroine (who is not an overthinker, to her detriment), so that is moving onward again too!

Until next time,

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Aug 02 2024

This & That

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve been trying to make the time to blog regularly…obviously, that’s going well. I keep telling myself I’ll figure it out eventually, and then my hormone supplements run out, or I make the horrible decision to eat myself into 12 more pounds (which affects not just my hormones, but also my overall sleeping/living/daily life), or life just happens and I try to swim with the current and end up getting tumbled against the rocks.

In any case, a lot has happened since the last blog post, some of which will become posts all their own eventually:

– Hubby and I took another daytrip to collect Montana Bookstore Trail stamps. We went northwest this time, to Livingston and Bozeman. Briefly, five bookstores in one day is too much when you have to drive a ways to get to them. Also, I may need another bookcase.

– During our trip, our newly installed windshield failed in a rainstorm, and water was leaking into the car on the passenger side (right onto my bare legs). Our van’s been in the shop all week, and we should get it back Friday (“today” as you’re reading this, maybe).

– There was one day this week that was absolutely beautiful walking weather. I’m calling it the Avocado of walking days, and I so wish I could reliably find them more often.

– My husband turned 60, so we celebrated with more food (and requisite sugar) and a rare trip to the theater to see Despicable Me 4, which was hilarious (naturally).

All that and a bit of stress at work (shaken, not stirred), equals not a lot of time left over. However, I’m trying to use that time more wisely, so I’ve managed to stop playing games (aside from Pokemon) during the week.

Now I just need to do something more productive with that time, like rewriting blurbs and planning “next scenes”.

I have been writing a bit – I’m stuck on something in the Magpie draft, so that’s sitting and waiting for me to get “unstuck”. Luckily, I never work on just one draft, so I also have a little short story started.

However, Halloween is coming! And Alex would really like to have another story out this year, so we’ll be working on that periodically as well.

So, things are happening. And I will eventually figure out how to document them here more steadily.

What are you up to? Reading? Writing? Taking walks because your weather is cooler than mine (where?!)? Comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

Until next time,

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Jul 12 2024

Sweet Alpine Silence

Author: Jamie DeBree

This past Monday, my husband and I took our classic van on its “maiden” voyage (with us) up into the mountains. It was time to hunt down our first “out of town” stamp for our Montana Bookstore Trail passport, as well as test out all the mechanical work we had done a few weeks ago, start breaking in the new tires, and make sure the transmission and new brakes were up to the task of ascending and descending sometimes steep inclines. That happens quite often in this state, especially when traveling west, so finding any problems closer to home is preferable than farther away.

Our first on-the-road passport stop was in the little tourist town of Red Lodge, Montana, at the base of the Beartooth mountain range a little less than an hour from where we live in Billings. The store is called Beartooth Books, and it’s in a lovely old stone building with a beautiful wooden door and a stained glass transom overhead. It’s cozy, but spacious enough not to feel crowded, with lots of light and incredibly handy “If you liked [big name author]…try [this not-so-big-name-author]” recommendations hanging on the shelves in very visible and helpful spots.

I picked up four books: “Dead Mountain” by Preston & Child, “Black River Orchard” by Chuck Wendig, “A Most Agreeable Murder” by Julia Seales, and “Lone Woman” by Victor LaValle. I also grabbed a couple of bookmarks – one for myself (because I’m trying to be slightly more civilized, though I’m not sure it’s working) and one for my mom for taking care of our dogs while we were out gallivanting around in the country.

The bookstore’s stamp for the passport was drawn by one of the owners when she was nine – a lovely image of a heart with a silhouette inside. The stamp was frisky that day, and tried to escape before it could “validate” my passport, but it was quickly retrieved and the validation complete.

After a successful book-shopping stop, we headed down the street to Bogarts for lunch, a popular restaurant that opened there the year I was born. I had an incredible burger with onion bacon jam and Gouda, and a side salad that was big enough to have been lunch all on its own. After that, we stopped at the candy shop, which you will not miss if you just walk main street, and grabbed a bag of taffy (another well-known destination that’s been around since I was a kid) before we headed on up into the mountains.

The Beartooth Pass tops out at nearly 11,000 feet, and the road up is only open in the summer (it’s buried, literally, in yards of snow all winter). The highway is very twisty with steep drop-offs, dramatic views, and sharp switchbacks to navigate, so it’s not a “set the cruise control and go” type of drive (not that our cruise control works). You have to pay attention and focus, and there are a lot of turn-outs where you can pull off and go hiking or just take in the mountain air and spectacular forestry (until you get above the timberline, anyways).

We kept going until we hit the summit, and then stopped to stretch our legs over the rocky Beartooth plateau, say “Hi” to the rock chucks, and enjoy the big sky our state is nicknamed for. It was cool and calm, and even though there were a few other people up there enjoying the day, the thing we both noticed pretty much right away was the silence.

Here in the city, it’s never silent. There’s always at least the underlying hum of electronics, cars, birds, chatter…even late at night in our “quiet” neighborhood, you can still hear civilization steadily moving.

Up there, it was silent. There wasn’t even much wind that day (it’s normally fairly breezy), and we stood there on the rocks among the wildflowers, looking out over the mountain range and just enjoyed the absolute silence for a bit. We stopped again at a little rest stop with a short walking trail, and even though there were a few more people and quite a few chipmunks begging for food (they told me off in squeaks because I didn’t bring sunflower seeds like others had), the underlying “feeling” was still one of silence. It was very grounding, even though the earth was literally falling away just on the other side of the guardrail.

I love quiet – I’m not someone who needs the TV or radio on “for noise” (in fact it bugs me if the TV is on when no one is actually watching it), and I need to be able to hear myself think in order to write or code or solve problems. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been out of my city, and just that little bit of silence, away from the constant hum of humanity was enough to convince me that I should venture out into the “wild” more often. It was glorious and exhilarating. Though it did take my ears a couple of days to recover from the quick descent from that high elevation (our city is at around 3,000ft, so we went up and down just over 7,000ft in the space of a few hours – down is worse, because it’s faster).

We were supposed to set out across the flatter “prairie” side of the state for Malta and Fairview for more Bookstore Trail stamps in a couple of weeks – our first overnight trip in the van. But my dear husband cut part of his finger off working on framing for the mattress Tuesday night, so that trip may have to wait a bit longer while he heals. I think we should be able to get a day trip in, though. If we do that, it’ll be farther towards the mountainous side of the state.

I’m looking forward to our next adventure out, whenever that may be. And while collecting stamps for our bookstore passport, I’m also collecting photos and ideas, which will hopefully shape themselves into stories. Or at least add to the stories already in progress.

When was the last time you found yourself in a place that felt utterly silent? Do you love the quiet, as I do, or does silence make you uncomfortable (as it does several people I know)?

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Jul 05 2024

Independence Day Thoughts

Author: Jamie DeBree

I rarely post political or social views online, mainly because I just don’t have the bandwidth to debate or argue about it with people more interested in swaying me to “their side” than actually having a logical, civil, back-and-forth conversation about issues. I also work in local government, and it pays to keep one’s personal views to themselves in that environment, to facilitate a reasonable working relationship with others.

But as I sit here in my home office, listening to people who didn’t want to spend an extra $5 on their taxes to fund a once-every-decade review of local government literally blow up a lot of money all around me, I feel compelled to post a rather long-winded diatribe about the state of our sociopolitical environment here in the US at the moment, and where I feel we’re headed in the not too distant future, just because so many people can’t divorce their loyalty to party in order to elect the *best person for the job as a whole*, rather than the person they feel will benefit them personally the most.

The truth is, my personal opinion doesn’t really matter in the big picture. Society as a whole is too far removed from the art of civil discourse and logical debate, and the vast majority do not understand and don’t want to think about the long-term consequences of candidates on a world-history-sized stage. They only want to look at how their life is right now, and right in front of them, rather than the actual history that caused those circumstances to “be”, and they don’t care how things will be affected worldwide (which will eventually affect their personal life) – they just want to hear someone tell them their life will be better right at this exact moment (and if they can make the “other team” completely miserable at the same time, all the better).

Too many people aren’t willing to compromise any longer – they must have it their way, or no way – like a whole generation of spoiled “only” children, and they will only vote for candidates who are either extreme right or extreme left, shunning those who dare try to walk the tightrope in the middle. Yet compromise is the only way a government like ours works – without compromise, and each side being willing to give leeway to the other side, there can’t be any consensus, and there can only be one winner. That kind of ideology isn’t compatible with democracy – it’s a monarchy, or “communist republic”, where only one ideology is allowed to “rule” (and once that’s allowed to be codified into law, it’s very, very difficult to overcome, generally requiring war and bloodshed).

It’s amazing to me how many people seem to think “communism” equals “wealth for all”, when right now we can easily see in communist countries elsewhere that it actually equals poverty for all except the wealthy few, and very little ability to actually move up in class or caste (depending on the country).

It’s worth remembering that extreme views tend to cause extremely uncomfortable lives for those who aren’t wealthy and in power…and it doesn’t matter which extreme – both are equally bad for a major portion of the population.

I think the only thing that could possibly save our democracy and independence is if people on both sides of the aisle stopped being so hard-nosed about their views, and started actively trying to find ways to compromise. That would allow both sides to actually have a decent amount of what they want, without forcing anyone to bear a whole lot of what will make them miserable.

I also would like to see people start actively voting for politicians who are *not* extremists in their party, but rather the moderates on both sides who can look at an issue from many different angles and then work together to figure out how everyone could mostly be happy. Yes, that still means compromise, and neither side gets everything they want. But overall I think that’s the only way everyone can be reasonably happy, and the only way to maintain the independence that our country was founded on.

Alas, I believe we are too far gone, and too selfish to come back from this ideology of extremes, and I think very soon it will cost us our democracy, which in turn will cost us a lot of the freedoms we take for granted today. Such is the trajectory most democratic governments eventually take, unfortunately (so says the historical record). But as usual, we won’t appreciate what we had until we lose it.

For now, I shall continue to vote moderate as much as I’m able, and to vote not for a particular party, but for the individual people I feel are best suited for the job at hand – who will do the best job not just for me personally, but for our city, county, state, and federal(world) levels, respectively.

I hope more people decide to do the same, but…I’m not holding my breath.

And now, having both impressed the founding fathers by speaking out and appalled them as both a woman who has opinions and a fence-straddling moderate, I feel I’ve done my historical and civic “duty” in adding my thoughts to the public record, and will now go back to relative silence as far as politics go.

I might need to pick up some more popcorn for the coming historical/sociopolitical shift though. Possibly a new popcorn maker, too.

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