Catching up

Boy was I out of the loop. I was working hard this week at my outside job so I missed local events like the Charles Lollar appearances here in town – in that case, his Eastern Shore coordinator and fellow blogger Julie Brewington was Johnny-on-the-spot for coverage. The same held true for national events like the Ted Cruz filibuster and subsequent Senate vote. I didn’t listen to talk radio this week, either – pretty much for me it was work, look at the pile of e-mail I have, try to get some kind of post up here and do the work required from another writing client (besides you, my readers), shrug my shoulders, and take my aching body to bed for another day’s toil the next day.

In the last few weeks, my outside job took me to the back of a number of local grocery stores, most of the local outposts of a nationwide pharmacy chain and discount store, and a few various sundry other places. In particular, the jobs where I would spend several hours at one location assembling a large display gave me an opportunity to listen in on how people think and what they talk about. And let me tell you this – those with whom I most closely involve myself in the political world live in one hell of an echo chamber. Perhaps it’s the unwritten rule about not discussing politics or religion at work – although it was written in a store I visited today – but I really never hear talk about current events in my travels, aside from how the football games are going on Sunday. (Yes, I have worked a few Sundays of late, which tells you the hours I’m keeping.) It’s mostly internal gossip if anything.

All that traveling around I do also takes me to several small communities on a weekly or biweekly basis, so I notice changes there as well. Many of the smaller towns to which I travel have their share of vacant buildings, but once in awhile I see signs of progress like the newly-opened restaurant in one small town I frequent or the small spec commercial/industrial building on a main highway that’s been sitting vacant for a couple years finally getting finished out for a tenant. It makes the failures I see a little, like the little store which gamely tried to survive but only lasted the summer easier to take.

I think we tend to forget, when we get caught up in political arguments on Facebook or scramble to update our blogs with the latest moves in the gubernatorial chase, that our little world is pretty small compared to life in general. We can get totally immersed in it, but seeing as I make most of my living outside that realm I suppose I may be more grounded than most. Yes, it’s making it that much more difficult to get to writing book number two, but I guess I’d like to sell more of book number one anyway.

All this time working, driving between stops, and otherwise trying to keep everything together has got me to pondering the future of this site. No, it’s not going away; instead I think I have a couple ideas for improvement but I’ll keep them under my hat for now. In the meantime, I have a crapload of e-mail to get to and it’s been a long week. There’s a couple posts I’ve been meaning to get to for awhile and I think you’ll enjoy them once I get back to squared away. I’ll just be happy to get my evenings back again.