I'm Not Interested

I told you before,
Stay away from my door . . .
Don't give me that brother-brother-brother, brother!

-- John Lennon

I got another solicitation for money and/or a petition signature in my e-mail last week.  It was to help save legal contraception from being overturned by the Supreme Court.

I unsubscribed from the mailing list and deleted it.  I'm not interested in joining a fight that I know I'd be on the losing end on. 

And I've been doing that for the past ten months, ever since I decided that I would quit as many things as I could because . . . well, I wasn't interested anymore.  Going through a pandemic - still in progress, which the World Health Organization made official yesterday - does wonders for making you see what a waste of time so many things are.  In the past ten months, I have unsubscribed from newsletters from the Montclair Film Festival, the Montclair Art Museum, the Democratic National Committee, Facebook "friends" that aren't really friends, never-going-anywhere loser candidates for public office, and numerous organizations asking me to fight climate change, save the bees, support tax hikes for the rich, save democracy, and just about every losing cause MoveOn.org supports.  And, as noted here, I quit MoveOn.org itself, not to mention the Society of Professional Journalists (nothing but an expensive magazine subscription), Ancestry.com (too expensive, and distant cousins I contacted couldn't care less about me!), and all plans for the immediate and distant future (didn't ya hear, there's a pandemic going on!).  I also unsubscribed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's newsletters when I remembered that it's been over a decade since I was last in Philadelphia and it became apparent that I would not be going there on Amtrak any time soon.

And, of curse as noted, I quit campaigning for bullet trains for Amtrak.

I'm not quitting this blog, but don't be surprised if I start paring down the number of blog posts I type, because writing a blog post a day takes up a lot of time I could better spend listening to CDs, reading or watching TV (that includes movies on TV; why would I want to go the movie theater when there's a pandmeic still raging??), especially when I only get twenty or thirty views a post.   And whatever you do, do not confuse my commentary with concern.  I'm doing no more than commenting on things like the debt ceiling (which I don't care about) because there's nothing I can actually do about it (and I don't care).

Look, some guy in Memphis just got beaten to death by the cops, which happened on the heels of over three dozen mass shootings in January, and Congress - especially the Republican House - still won't do anything about any of that.  How do you expect me to have any hpe for police reform or anything else when those who can do something about what goes on and make America a not-so-unpleasant place to live don't want to do anything?

What am I supposed to do, write my congresswoman?

To respond to the inevitable complain that that's not funny, it wasn't meant to be.  None of this blog post was meant to be.  How can I enjoy life when I still have to worry about COVID hitting?  And how can I look forward to a better America when everything just keeps getting worse? 

And what do progressives do? They think that renaming public spaces for civil rights leaders and painting "BLACK LIVES MATTER" on streets is going to solve all of our racial problems. 

So when I get an e-mail or a door-to-door petition circulator telling me to change the world, my response is, "No.  You change the world.  Don't bother me . . ..  I'm not interested."

Perhaps I can make myself clearer with a song.

Still Quitting

About six months ago this time, I announced here that I was giving up on just about everything - my goals for the future (some of which were for a part of my life now in the past), numerous activities, and just about everything else.  Here's an update: I'm still giving up.

My social life still isn't what it should be.  Despite a day trip to the Jersey Shore with my friend Clarisel to take pictures, I haven't been able to follow up on that with other social experiences.  I had hoped to see a woman I'm friends with through social media sometime this fall, but right now it looks like I won't have the time, meaning I'll have to put it off for at least six months. And even in the spring, I may not get to see her.

I'm still disengaged from politics.  I'm aware of what's going on, but being aware of something should never be confused with the ability to do anything about it, and since there's nothing I can do about the country becoming the sort of place no sane person would want to live in, I'm pretty much on the sidelines watching its downfall happen in real time.  (The Beto O'Rourke gubernatorial campaign in Texas started sending me e-mails, and I unsubscribed from them. When asked why I was unsubscribing, I replied by explaining that I don't live in Texas and Beto's not going to win.)  I would advise anyone planning a big celebration for a quarter millennium of American independence in 2026 to just call it off.  What is there to celebrate?

Annual activities? Like auto shows and Beatles conventions?  Those fashion-business reunion parties I go to by virtue of documenting models on my beautiful-women picture blog?  Well, those annual parties are probably done due to COVID, the plague that will not end, and COVID is keeping me away from anything else.  Actually, I stopped going to Beatles conventions after 2016 because they cost too much, and COVID wasn't the only reason I gave up on auto shows.  The other reasons were that some auto marques aren't taking part in New York's annual show and those that do offer up pathetic displays, which I noticed on YouTube.   I did plan resuming to go to an outdoor annual classic-car show devoted to cars with air-cooled engines - mostly Volkswagens, of course - held every third Sunday of September.  Unfortunately, I learned too late that the organizers no longer sell tickets at the gate and that I had to buy one in advance; by the time I tire to, they were all sold out.  I went to a smaller car show elsewhere, but it wasn't quite the same.  For one thing, there was only one Volkswagen. 

Ahh, who cares?  Everyone laughed at John Mellencamp when he sang about how life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, because he made it sound like there's no thrill to life even when you're healthy enough to enjoy it.  The pandemic showed just how life can go on without the thrill of living, so that stupid song lyric now sounds like genius.  But then maybe a thrill that goes away someday comes back.  Maybe when the pandemic finally eases, when we get a handle on climate change, and when Trump and his ilk are finally washed-up has-beens, life will get better and I'll have reason not to give up on anything.  But in the meantime, I'm lying lower than a snake's belly.  

See you 'round the clubs.     

The Art of Quitting

I continue to withdraw from life as I used to know it.  I just did something I thought I'd never do; I decided to stop campaigning for high-speed rail to be established in the United States.  It became apparent that, even with an Amtrak advocate like Joe Biden in the White House, the political and societal conditions that exist today make it impossible to bring bullet trains to America.  The infrastructure bill passed and signed into law will help Amtrak upgrade its service and modernize its equipment, but it will not bring our passenger rail into the twenty-first century.  We will have to be satisfied with Amtrak being upgraded to the late 1960s.  So I withdrew my high-speed rail petition from MoveOn.org after getting only 22 signatures in seven years . . . and I withdrew from MoveOn.org. 

And I quit MoveOn.org because I'm giving up on all political causes.  As far as I'm concerned, it's over.  Let the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.  Let Louis DeJoy remain Postmaster General.  Let school boards ban books.  I don't care any more.  I got sick and tired of all these e-mails from groups asking me to sign a petition for this or writing my senator for that or asking for donations (which I never gave anyway) . . . so I unsubscribed from the e-mail lists of all of the liberal groups and online left-leaning publications that sent them to me.  Especially the snarky Daily Kos.  And after all the ridicule I got for supporting the presidential campaign of Martin O'Malley - who also got a lot of ridicule - why would I want to join another presidential campaign? (Technically, though, I never joined the O'Malley campaign because it didn't make it past Iowa.) 

And this great resignation isn't limited to politics.  I have been a book reviewer both for IndieReader.com and on this blog.  When I lost touch with my editor at IndieReader over the fall and the holidays, I kept putting off sending an e-mail to her until I suddenly realized I didn't have the desire to write book reviews anymore.  Oh, I may go back to that eventually.  But for now, I've had enough.  

I've even given up giving up.  Raised Catholic (but never confirmed), I faithfully gave up something every Lent even after I stopped going to church.  During the 2020 Lenten season, I gave up drinking hot chocolate as my sacrifice but resumed drinking it after three or four weeks because the pandemic made me give up . . . everything else.  I haven't observed Lent since.      

This quitting spree is nothing new for me.  In fact, I've thrown in the towel so many times in my life, I've made an art of it.  Particulars:

I took guitar lessons when I was a teenager. I never could master it. I quit.

I graduated from college and sought to go to graduate school because my parents wanted me to, but I had to pay my own way. After vacillating between journalism and communications, being unable to afford the journalism school of my choice and getting rejected by the communications school of my choice, I decided that I didn't want to go to graduate school any more. I never did want to, really.  I quit.  Years after that, I signed up for a graduate communications course at Fairleigh Dickinson University but withdrew before it even started.

I signed up for a journalism course at Montclair State. After one class, I was unimpressed. I quit.

I signed up for computer programming school at the Chubb Institute and lasted only three classes. I quit. And the school turned out to be a rip-off anyway.

I looked for a career-oriented job out of college even while looking into graduate school. I tried looking at jobs in publishing, broadcasting, and journalism, and I found nothing.  I quit.

I was hoping that a career-oriented job would help me strike out on my own. After a couple of years, it became apparent that that was not going to happen, so I quit.

After getting laid off from my permanent full-time medical insurance job, I tried other permanent full-time jobs that didn't work out. When I got laid off from my last permanent full-time job - after half a day of employment (long story), I stopped looking for a permanent full-time job. I quit.

I once thought I wanted a girlfriend. I never had a high school sweetheart. I never had a college sweetheart. I never found a girl or woman I asked out who wasn't already taken. I fell in love twice, and neither woman loved me back. Going to see a ladyfriend of mine, I drove my car through a flash-flooded road from a severe rainstorm that tore out the plastic undershield of my car. I quit looking for a girlfriend.

I tried writing on spec articles by specializing in profile articles on interesting women, but after getting only a few of them published, going nowhere with others, and never getting paid for them - plus a bad experience with one woman I approached - I quit.

I was a contributing writer for a local newspaper in Manhattan, but after one assignment didn't work out, I quit.

As previously noted, I made numerous attempts over twenty years to travel abroad - first with my mother, then alone - that didn't pan out. I had a chance to go to Paris to see a friend of mine there. Instead I got appendicitis, then when I looked again at the possibility of going to France, COVID hit. I held out hope during the pandemic. Now we have a pandemic plus a war. I quit.

I started seeing a woman and started going bowling again just before COVID hit. I might see this woman again soon - I might - but I have no plans or desire to go bowling again. I quit.

I wanted to say I quit Scouting, but that would be inaccurate.  I moved around a lot as a kid and missed the Bear Cub Scout and Webelos years. Boy Scout meetings were boring and I never paid attention to what was going on, but I did earn a stamp collecting merit badge - which I never received because I moved in with my father, who lived in a different state then, and he apparently couldn't be bothered to help me pick up Scouting where I left off. I never actually quit it, really. I just drifted away from it . . ..

Ahh, that's enough for one post. I quit.