On the Twenty-eighth Day of 2025…

…I find my inspiration lagging. A topic of focus for today’s post eludes me. “Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful.” A whole assortment of quotes from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot might be appropriate for today, but that was the first one that came to mind. It’s not exactly true of my Tuesday that nothing happened. There were a bunch of mundane things not worth writing home about. I left the house twice, once on a dog walk and once in the car. I drove for 45 minutes to have my bass drum pedal checked out. I bought a used snare stand for the practice pad in my study. That’s it, really. I wanted to read all day but didn’t. That’s an odd feeling, to want to do a thing but be seemingly unable to do it. As much as I have tried to avoid it, the temptation to read or watch the news is often too great. So I learned today about some of the stuff our new government is up to, all of which makes me angry, and I watched some clips of the administration’s very first press briefing given by the youngest press secretary in history. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like her. I can’t be objective. I can’t give her the benefit of the doubt. I distrust her from the get-go. I’m not proud of that. Everything in Trump’s orbit is antithetical and anathema to all that I value and believe. I find nothing redeeming about any of it. I guess I am learning how the other side must have felt through the previous four years, but at the same time, in my heart of hearts, I know it’s not as simple as that. We’re not talking about two very different but equally viable philosophies; we’re talking about right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice, democracy and authoritarianism, truth and untruth, and I trust that my sensibilities are on the right side of these dualities. What has transpired in only the first week of this administration strikes me as inhumane, unlawful, anti-democratic, hate-mongering, vile, stupid, and dangerous. One week! I don’t know. I have to find a way, as I have mentioned before, of preventing myself from becoming mired in this stuff. It’s hard. For example, as I sat this morning for twenty minutes on the meditation cushion, it was nearly impossible not to allow this stuff into my consciousness. Talk about living rent-free in someone’s head. And I thought to myself, why is he in there? What right does he have?! Why am I stewing about the demise of democracy when I should be focused on the breath? This is not meditation! Haven’t I said this before: even bad meditation is better than no meditation? I should have just said that out loud over and over as a kind of mantra. That would have worked. Speaking of repeating things, I have to remind myself now about the strategies I know will be effective, and when I realize that today I let these things take a back seat, it’s no wonder I find myself feeling like I have nothing to say. Writing, reading, making music, taking care of my relationships–I could have used more of any of those things in my day. But I did get a text message this morning, a response to a referral my doctor sent as per my request: I’m gonna look for a therapist. I need a tune-up. I’ve put it off for too long, convincing myself somehow that it wasn’t necessary, or that I didn’t deserve it. That’s some super old habit energy, there. I need a tune up, I say, and I will get one.