whacking at the cobwebs

Last week it occurred to me that the internet, upon which I am now posting, is a narrow and confining place, just like lots of other areas of life in January. Everybody gets so excited about the new year and all the weight they're going to lose and all the changes they're going to make. The glow of Christmas is all warm and life giving. Volumes are spilled about how a new year will bring a new dawn of peace and good will. Everyone wants peace, after all, and it will be easier to go to the gym this year than it was last year. It just will. 

And then the first day back to work after all the debauchery and partying and those most ordinary and average amongst us (me) conclude that it was all a bad idea--the world peace, the thinner waste line, the super duper awesome new school schedule. No, life will go on as it did before. We will just spin in our own stupidity and quietness because nobody cares anyway. And the internet is the perfect way to live out this boring and life sapping dream.

After having read everything there was to read about Chis Chirstie and Obamacare and the new Gates book (not that I read the book, oh no no, the internet addict only reads accounts of other people reading books), I went ahead and read about how the Obama's marriage is falling apart and that poor ship full of scientists stuck in the Antarctic in the summer time in the ice (hee hee hee). 

But then it appeared that I had come to the end. There didn't appear to be anything else to read.

Six or seven more scrolls through Facebook and I was filled with deep rebellion. I have already twice digested the 26 things strong minded people don't do. I have looked at all the memes there are to look at and even laughed at them. I have read all the advice and looked at all the recipes and been warned against the massive and horrific evils of vaccinating and not vaccinating, Islamic terrorism, children leaving church, and been twice through the 50 things you can do to make your kitchen more efficient.

And I feel very mentally squeezed into a small depressing box. I've tasted all the fruits the vast interwebs have to offer (well...not all of them...I'm not totally stupid) and at the end of my long search I am bored and not a tenth as smart as Solomon and every other single person in history and the world who doesn't even have a tiny number of the books or written material I have in my own bedroom.

So then I reread Coctail Time (PG Wodehouse as I'm sure you already know) and I feel the life returning to my heart and mind. Vigor and hope are slowly coming into my limbs. I will go clean the girls room. I will write something else in a place where not everyone will immediately read it. I will sweep the floor. Maybe the Obama's marriage is really on the rocks. How should I know? Why should I know? It's not important or interesting. More interesting and important is my own stupefied soul and the ennui that is so constantly pressing in from the gray weather and the church's brick wall. I don't need to constantly be making it worse by looking at pictures of sunsets and duck ponds with words scrolled across the front. I say constantly, for that is how much my wretched phone feels like it is in my hand. And the words are always so bossy--Live one day at a time! Treasure each moment! Don't be anxious! Pray for the children! Care for others!

Give me a break. For real. A real unbossed, unpious, disurgent, slightly more intelligent break. 

Not from blogging, of course. Please don't you take a break from reading me. That wouldn't do at all. Just please don't make me, or even let me, read any more drivel.