roblog

There is so much I want to say, uplift, encourage, provoke, express, scream into the void and rant, sometimes with heavy doses of biting humor, sarcasm, cursing and profanity. I want to awaken the complacent, compel the shallow to think deeply, re-direct peoples' legitimate anger toward productive problem solving and tear town the tyranny of simplistic thought processes. I want to combat ignorance with reason, logic, compassion, empathy and facts.

I have discovered, much to my chagrin, that as I pursue these (as I like to see them) high minded goals, I find an apparent law of nature at work: the glaringly obvious reality that this world is full of humans who are orders of magnitude better informed, smarter, funnier, wittier, and quicker on their feet than I. No sooner does (what I believe to be) a thought of incredible genius, insight and cleverness emerge from the acrid depths of the fried neurons of my mind, traveling down my peripheral nervous system to my itchy social media posting fingers, than I discover someone else has already blanketed the internet with the same thought, way more equisitely exporessed, with superior meme energy and hours if not days before said thought was no more than a molecule of serotonin nestled deep in the recesses of my brain.

The outcome of said predicament is usually one of the following:

• I perform the digital equivalent of biting my tongue off, and the post never sees the light of day.
• I tone the post down to make it gentler and hopefully less upsetting (even though believe there are times when some folks could benefit from a little surgical application of strategic upset-ness).
• I fling it out there as-is, feeling like I just threw a hand grenade into my Facebook feed. I feel a sudden pang of regret, and may even delete the post minutes later.
• I summon all my bravery and courage and humility and decide to let it stay, come what may. I then dare to hope that I impacted someone who actually needed to hear what I had to say, only to come back days later to...crickets. No "Likes", no comments.

Clearly this is not a healthy pattern. If I had a dollar for every time I contemplated deleting my Facebook profile, I'd be rich enough to buy out Zuckerberg. As much as I despise Zuck for making himself a disciple of Herr Shitler, the fact of the matter is that there are several people I'm connected to on FB whom I genuinely want to keep in touch with. Unlike Tangerine Palpatine, I am not willing to punish those who are not part of the problem.

At the same time, if I keep silent when my brain is on fire, I feel like I will burn up from the inside out. The spicy thoughts must flow!

My mental and emotional health depends on it.

roblog is the answer.

This is where I tell it like it is, exactly how I feel and what I think about any and all topics of my choosing. This blog will not be monetized. I don't care about getting clicks, hits or likes. This is my personal free-speech zone, primarily for the benefit of my mental health. When I get all riled up about something, I have found journaling to be incredibly liberating and calming. Something about knowing that my thoughts are "out there" in the world somewhere, visible but without needing to be attention-seeking, brings me relief.

It is likely that a great deal of what I end up sharing here will be from the personal journal I've kept on and off for the past 40+ years.

Naturally, anyone who is genuinely interested in what goes on inside my brain is welcome here. There will be no option to comment directly on this site, but I am open to having respectful discussions via email.