Will blog for food

Just like regular people

Every time I think I've turned the corner and life will get easier, I'm wrong.  I readily admit that compared to many people's grim lives, mine is a walk in a sunny park--what I mean is, my tattered  financial and emotional life.  I'm unemployed between jobs again (after several temporary positions since last spring), and much too poor, which overshadows almost every other thought I have.  The minute I consider tapping out a little essay or relating a funny story, I'm overwhelmed with anxiety and regret--how can this be funny?  Why will that situation matter to anyone else?  And I click over to someone else's blog.  Someone whose blog is more clever, thoughtful, or creative than mine.  You know the one.

I see a lot of evidence that other, much more prolific, bloggers are calling it quits, and I think I understand their reasons.  Nobody should feel required to blog (that's the main difference between blogging and working), and we essentially write our own "rules", and for the most part, we don't get paid, which makes it easier to quit.  For me, a rather small-time writer with no sponsors or much of a fan base, blogging is like reading a book--I just feel SO MUCH BETTER when I have a book in progress, or when I've just published a post.  But then all the YOU REALLY SHOULD BE WORKING feelings flood in and I don't do either one.  My only [self-imposed] obligation is to be "readable"--whether that means funny, or insightful, or helpful.  I just want others to like what I write, and to come back for more.  And if all I am is a great big saddo, on-screen and off, I'm not particularly readable. I wouldn't read One-Note-Wanda's serial of endless pathos, would you?

How'd you like to be unemployed?

But then…a year into my exile, Downton Abbey came around again, a bright beacon after a dim and meager Christmas.  I've mentioned that Lillie and I abstained from watching the new season (available to sneaky Americans) in September, because we felt first we honestly should recap the final [silly] episode of the previous season, as we promised last winter.  And on Christmas Eve we hit publish, and then play, and away we went.  We now have three recaps ready to read and have watched up through episode seven, and are getting back in the groove with writing them.  It's a big fat juicy season so far, which keeps our minds off our mutual money troubles (Lillie was very unexpectedly [and unjustly, I believe] fired from HER bar job last Friday, and I admire her stoic ability to simultaneously type and cry.)  Between the two of us, we still babysit our two little not-exactly-relatives, ages one and three, which covers the groceries and phone bill, but there's always the mortgage, utilities, deferred medical care, and on and on…

Hi Mom

We'll really try to get the recap out every week (barring a sudden worsening of our mutual despair) and I intend to get a non-Downton post finished from time to time, until things shake out one way or another.  I miss it, and it makes me feel better, and I know you want to see more pictures of the cats.

Who wouldn't?

It also makes me feel better that it was Lillian, and not me, who was trying restlessly to nap after another night of sadsomnia, and spilled a tumbler of "whinin' wine" in her bed, on all the freshly laundered sheets and blankets and down the side onto the carpet.  Sippy cups.  Just saying.

A rather more literate pet than either of mine

For the latest DA recap, plus links to all the others, click here.

For the best DA cast self-spoof in the history of tv, click here (no spoilers in it, don't worry.)