20181204.0430

For as much as I have expressed appreciation for the San Antonio Express-News over the past few days' posts, and as much as I am like to in the days to come, it is not always the case that the news boasts something that lends itself to the kind of writing I do here. I am interested in what happens in the city where my brother lives and where I do some of the work I do, but not always in a way that allows me to put my pen to paper or fingers to keys about it. I have to wonder if it is some failing in me that I am not able to do so, that I am not always apt to summon up the kind of engagement and involvement that lets me plow through a piece of writing (and my speed at doing so is returning, for which I am thankful; it had been a concern), form an opinion of it, and express that opinion in a few hundred words of what I hope is coherent prose. (I'm getting my speed back at doing that, too, which also pleases.) Indeed, I fear that it is so.
It is a minor thing, I know, that I cannot find something in the paper about which to write for this entry. Most folks do not do so for anything they find in the newspaper, so it is some success that I have done so at all, and I've done so repeatedly. And I've done a fair bit of other writing, besides, so not necessarily having the kind of project I want to have at this moment is not necessarily a failure; the real problem would be if I were not writing at all, or if I were not writing enough. Except that I am still sufficiently mired in the mindset of academe that I think of the writing I do in terms of ongoing projects to be completed--and the common refrain of "you should be writing" that besets scholars in all fields continues to ring in my ears, the discordant strain repeating in a braying cacophony that I cannot shut out, even now. I have work to do, specific work, and I am not doing it. I can't get myself in a headspace to do it, like trying to paint without brushes or build without hammer and saw. It's bad enough that I'm mixing metaphors and similes, throwing them together raggedly and without concern for how they work.
I take some hope from one of the known features of the newspaper: there'll be another one tomorrow. Another sheaf of paper printed with words and pictures that describe the state of affairs in the Alamo City will arrive on my driveway; its pixelated counterpart will enter my email inbox. I'll have a chance to scour it again and, with luck, find something upon which I can build my own thoughts before putting them where at least a few others can see it and, perhaps, build up their own.