Not blogging is exhausting

The worst thing for a blogger is to not have anything to say. The second worst thing is to have things to say, but no will to do so. I’ve been facing the second problem for quite awhile now, and today I finally understand why that is, thanks to a fellow blogger.

My friend Roger Green published a post entitled “He cannot be the sole authority of truth”, which basically talks about Don’s attempts to make his lies be the only “truth”. In the first paragraph, Roger talks about not writing about Don, and notes:

It’s not for lack of interest. Some of it has been lack of time. But mostly, it’s that it’s too hard, with so many issues popping that I can scarcely keep up.

It was an epiphany of sorts for me, and I replied in a comment:

Yes! That’s it exactly! Every time I think I’m going to talk about something, it changes again—or something even worse happens. It’s exhausting.

Anyone who knows me well, or who’s read this blog for any length of time, knows that politics is one of my passions. In fact, here’s some trivia: I have more posts tagged “US Politics” (1268, not counting this one) than any other topic. Not all of those are about partisan politics, of course, and many are about political things in general or issues, but the point is clear: Roughly a third of my blog posts are related to US politics in some way.

So, it’s really weird how little I’ve talked about US politics so far this year, given how much there is to say. I published 14 posts tagged “US Politics” in January, but 9 of them were before Inauguration Day (leaving five for last 11 days of the month). In February, I’ve published only five, only one of which was primarily about Don. I would have thought both totals would have been much higher, considering the chaos in Washington, DC. In fact, it would have been higher, but I’ve backed out of doing such posts more times than I could count.

So Roger’s post summed up why that’s been the case. But I honestly don’t know what to do about it.

I’ve long talked about spinning off US politics into a separate blog, and I tried again recently (technical failures made that impossible). Given that about a third of this blog is about US politics, something I actually didn’t realise until researching this post, that now seems like a really dumb idea.

I need to find a way to talk about US politics, and Don specifically, in a way that doesn’t wear me out. But this problem isn’t limited to this blog: I’m also not posting anything political to my personal Facebook, and I’ve dramatically cut back on the comments I leave on others’ political posts. So, this is a generalised withdrawal from talking about US politics.

Thanks to Roger’s post, though, I think I’m getting some clarity about all of this, and that’s the first step toward figuring out what will work for me. At least it’ll make for a topic to blog about. These days, that’s a really good thing.