Today's Instagram post (this post was shot just below this previous post).
I've been fighting Long CoViD for over six months now. I'm finally doing better. I'm writing a book about it, so far titled, "Suffering Long CoViD" (LC). I'm doing better, but it's been a nightmare. Getting over it this much in this amount of time is very pleasing. First time was eight months going on eighteen months from February 2020 into the next year.
Part of my treatment has been exercise. Which I couldn't do for a long time. After a few months I started walking. Ten minutes the first day. Today I did four miles. I've gotten up to five miles (in walking every other day for a day of healing from the walk), but the poor air quality from forest fires in Washington state this past week shut down being outside (with this condition). We had I'd heard, twelve forest fires going on.
To make the walks more endurable, I started listening to music. Then I got to where I would listen to a whole album. Then a couple. Finally switched to podcasts and found that much more useful. The walks, and the podcasts even more so, invigorated my creativity and I started taking notes on my walks.
I would use those notes when I got home (after taking it easy, hydrating), to work on my book on LC. Or posting to Twitter, mostly political commentaries but also just some thoughts on life at times.
It has gotten now, with these longer walks to generate longer thoughts and more of them. It got to be burdomsome to post them to Twitter. Today it occurred to me to maybe just post them into a blog and be done with it. I liked that idea. It frees my time up. I want to get this book finished and out there. I haven't written in it all week as I wasn't feeling well and my head hurt all week long.
So, here it is, just posting all my thoughts in a blog. Apologies. Or, enjoy! Your choice.
Walkabout Thoughts:
I was listening to this past week's Pod Save America ep. 671 "The GOP's One Man Ban".
First, a disclaimer about how I’m really not partisan, or never had been until the Republican Party forced it as necessary, more and more over the years, until they elected Donald Trump, making it impossible to be any other way.
We need Republicans to quit trying to be "good" Christians and start being good Americans again. Stop following theology and get back to your science and medicine. Which at least has something other than emotions to do with women’s rights and having their choice of what actually needs to be done, over what some "morally" believe should be done.
Republicans are trying to eliminate democracy to decrease our people's control. Which would decrease the control of our people over our government. How can one not draw the natural conclusion that what they’re shooting for is a new version of the Soviet Union, this time through capitalism not socialism? The stupidity in the direction they are taking this is mind boggling. It makes one wonder how an enemy nation isn’t pulling their strings on them. Which I don’t believe they are. So why are they acting as if that IS the case? Just as Trump did, making us all think he was a Russian agent. Which he still is acting as if he is.
Liberal's politics have a base of science & ideology, ideology that’s based on people, community and the future. Conservatives, especially MAGA follow their ideology as it leads them (as Donald Trump's Chief Ideologist Steve Bannon designed for him, as Trump had none before him, as filthy and disgusting at it is), but doesn’t give a shit about people, or anything except following dogma. This is a form that has started wars, genocides, has weaponized faith and now Republicans who lean deeply into it offering their assuming power and control, and money thru lies, leading they think, into a civil war. Which is already engaged. It's just evolved beyond the form of our first civil war.
Republicans have attacked conservatives who well may be smart, who try to be, to recognize threats, but are not wise. Wisdom recognizes threats but also sees the other side of that in any instance or situation, in evaluating a threat, and then tuck it away if that’s the best choice. Which so often it is. This excessive carefulness in thought, has created MAGA who attack unnecessarily and actually attacks the very things those people believe they are fighting for. It is again that pilot who is upside down and pulls "upward", directly into the ground in being utterly disoriented, but trying to do the right thing.
By the way, voting for anyone who appears "better than Trump", is not realistic. It’s defeatist. It’s accepting the lowest bar he did everything in his power to lower, minute by minute.
I’ve been saying this all through the Trump administration years, that the only thing more dangerous than an idiot like Trump as POTUS is someone who’s not an idiot but tries to imitate Trump. Which makes them far more dangerous. Yes, I’m talking about DeSantis, or people like him. Just another faux conservative bully. So for those voting for DeSantis who are breathing a sigh of relief, stop it! Hold your breath until he is off the political field.
The problem with researchers who studied biking vs walking, who say that mile for mile bicycling is equal to walking, seem to be ignoring the fact, or the caveat is not getting out, that when you’re coasting, you’re not walking. If half of your bike ride is coasting, that’s not walking.
To my friend and fellow director (and podcaster) Kelly Hughes: I would like to propose something to you. I use my postings in social media, which admittedly are generally political or entertainment based, to hone my skills in debate and being concise. Which leads me to research, honing those skills. I’ve been using Instagram in recent months to do just that, with my camera work. I would propose start using Instagram, try to see things in your environment that are worth sharing, then shoot it in a way, within 30 seconds or less, that sharpens your camera work and filmmaking skills, exhibiting that to the public. That seems to be why I have been getting up to 30,000 views on some of my videos. Also, for you, your best skill may be your voice, interviewing and commentary, especially off the cuff. So you could shoot videos where you have only a few seconds to say something clever, to sound clever and interesting. Decades ago I heard a famous author say that one of the best ways to prepare to write a novel is to write the shortest stories you can, down to a paragraph. Which I did practice doing. Some will argue that’s not how you learn to write a novel or book. Which is true, because that’s far more complicated. But every novel or book is a sentence or paragraph first. Some of the best fiction I've read are essentially short paragraphs which are little essays that lead to a larger cohesive whole.
This is not a country founded on Christianity, but initially a country of mostly Christians who founded a country for freedom, All in part because of abuse of religious beliefs in the countries those people's ancestors fled from. It makes no sense therefore, that a minority who are theists, attempt to apply their specific theology in their freedom of thought, and work to subvert our government, to apply all that against other people's freedoms of action.
The theory of the "attacking dying wild animal" fits so much today of what’s been going on. We’ve called the Republican party a "zombie" party for years. Conservatism, toxic as it is, is broken and dying. It's been trying to kill itself. Religion too has been broken, mostly by reality over hundreds if not thousands of years, is also dying. I see this in many places. I’ve been fighting long CoViD now for going on seven months, not for the first time in over two years. When I got my updated booster last Monday, I went through hell week, until I woke up Saturday morning and felt it was almost gone. Again as if the virus was an attacking dying wild animal. So don't assume what you're seeing around us is a growing movement, but a dying while animal, made "wild" by consent and with purpose of its leaders.
Maybe I should start blogging these walkabout thoughts, instead of tweeting them. Because it’s getting burdensome to Tweet them all. Then I could start a new series of blogs of my "Walkabout Thoughts", or something. "Walking Thoughts"?
And...here we are.
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