I’m a lousy blogger, which is fine since you all have more than enough in your daily feed to keep you thinking, laughing, obsessing—whatever you need.
It’s not that I have nothing to say. I have more than enough—see the daily feed above. I just can’t settle on one topic long enough to say what I want.
This is a phenomenon of the 21st century. It used to be you read (or didn’t) a daily newspaper and watched the evening news—three broadcast channels to choose from if your antenna was in the right position. That was it. The full sum of what entered your brain that wasn’t from someone talking to, or with, you. Well, there was also radio, but that was mostly the Top 40 Hits, not endless talk.
I know that marks me as old, but not as old as you might think. If 60 is the new 40—and believe me, it is—then I’m not yet middle aged. But my parents have been dead for decades. They were old when they had me, and I was young when they died.
More to the point, the flood of information passing through our eyeballs has increased faster than the CO2 in the atmosphere, faster than global temperatures.
And I don’t think we—those of us with “means”—understand how that affects us. There are endless topics I could blog about, but by the time I get my thoughts down on paper (which is where I wrote this first draft) a dozen, a hundred, a million others have already opined on that topic and a dozen, a hundred, a million more ideas have popped into and right out of my head.
It’s January. A new year. One destined to be interesting at best. Time to resolve to do certain things.
But I won’t do that. I won’t resolve to write more blog posts. I won’t even resolve to finish my novel-in-progress, though I’d like to and probably could if I stopped worrying about everything going on that I’m not blogging about but could and maybe should.
There’s much to be said for slowing down the flood of information, filtering out the less urgent. I doom scroll news of the LA fires. Why? I have no one in harm’s way. I’m 3,000 miles from being able to help. Doom scrolling the fires has replaced doom scrolling Gaza and Ukraine and even the coming apocalypse that will be the next administration.
I’m a writer so, of course, everything is fodder for story.
There’s a psychological toll to all this doom scrolling, not to mention the toll of actually surviving a natural disaster. I was reminded of this listening to a piece on Living on Earth. Jenni Doering interviewed Jyoti Mishra, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, about the trauma of climate disasters such as the wildfires. Dr. Mishra was completely professional, articulate, and informative.
Then Doering asked a very simple, personal question: How do you feel?
More than 30 seconds of silence, stammering, and apologizing for becoming emotional followed. Dr. Mishra—in the parlance we writers favor—showed the toll that she’d been telling us about and that’s when I understood the importance of her job, the interview, and the enormity of what we are facing. Then she was able to slip back into her professional role and get back to doing her job. It’s quite remarkable.
At what point, however, does all this information become paralyzing?
How often do people regret their initial reaction to something once they learn how truly complicated it is?
It hurts my hand to write longhand very long, so every few paragraphs I stop and look out the window. A real window, not a computer window. A bluebird sits contemplating the mealworms. A junco pecks at the cracked corn. The sun shines. The wind had finally stopped. It’s quiet. Snow melts where the sun can reach.
Our time on this planet—or in this dimension if that’s your thing—is limited. We each have to decide how we’ll spend it. Many, too many, have no power to decide anything. I have that luxury.
Do I spend it choosing between Xitter, Meta, Mastodon, or Bluesky? Do I post or like or comment and then click back to see if anyone reposted, followed me, or liked it back? Does any of that change anything?
Am I learning anything that will make my life, my loved ones’ lives, any better? What do I need to know and do to keep myself and those I care about safe in the coming years?
In no time—yeah, for some it’s literally been a lifetime—the daily paper and evening news have been replaced by endless feeds of screaming headlines that may or may not be true.
Here’s my marker for 2025. I will pay attention. I may not comment or write about something that bugs me deeply, but I’m noting it. I will remain true to myself, which more often than not will mean getting outside into nature. I will no doubt succumb to doom scrolling. But I will remember that life is not pixels on a screen controlled by a billionaire and stored on a server chewing through water and spewing CO2.
The next administration will do horrible things. I may be among those hurt by its actions. I will remember that its leader did not win by a landslide, does not have a mandate, and 2026 will come and I will again vote. What energy I have to respond, protest, or act, will be by means that are not merely pixels on a screen controlled by a billionaire and stored on a server chewing through water and spewing CO2.
But hey, thanks for stopping by and check out Living on Earth: Wildfires Bring ‘Climate Trauma’.
Elaine Burnes 
Thanks for the reminder about Living On Earth! I am often not awake that early on Sundays, so I have missed listening to the show (and I am not a podcaster). I have already come to terms that this year is going to be difficult, and I have to force myself to stay positive, and try to change what I can. Maybe I will create more posts about environmental books for tweens and children; many of them have eco-anxiety, and I am sure those living in Los Angeles have been traumatized. Hold fast and keep writing!
I listen from their website. And I don’t know what to say to the kids. Growing up, it was important for me and my generation to first fall in love with nature. Then we felt compelled to help care for it (yet we failed!). Now kids are getting the bad news first, via their phones, and may not become interested in going outside at all, let alone help fix it all (which, honestly, does feel impossible). Maybe it can’t be fixed, but at least kept from being the worst-case scenario (which scientists don’t even know what that is). Thanks for stopping by!
About 40 years ago my parents bought an exhausted, depleted, ex-pineapple farm. Nothing grew on it except for grass — just a large paddock, bare of life, other than the grass.
Mum and Dad (especially Dad) had a passion for growing plants. so they planted hundreds of trees and shrubs and palms and orchids and many other things here. It is now a tall forest ringing with birdsong and is safe harbor for many, many lifeforms. They proved that we can rescue the planet; we just have to decide to.
Of course many things have changed over the decades, not least of which is the fact that buying land is out of reach of most people now, and buying a house is an impossibility. I’m hoping in the future to buy a small amount of land in the desert, or near-desert for very little money, hire one of those small digger machines to dig a hole, make a tiny home in it, cover it over, and live the last of my days there. Underground homes have many great advantages:
We have the tools to fix the world. Unfortunately, we are largely lacking the examples of people putting them into action. People can be forgiven for thinking it is hopeless. Even in the face of crazed, petty tyrants like Trump and Putin, we are more powerful than ever before in history.
We have almost instant access to boundless knowledge, mostly free… if we want it. We can buy/build 3D printers to make many of the gadgets we would normally buy, and though it generally isn’t yet, the plastic they use can be made out of the carbon dioxide in the air. Indoor farming holds out the promise of releasing much of the land from the devastating effects of agriculture to be re-wilded and/or for people’s homes. Vat-grown meat in particular can eliminate cruelty from our food, while improving food safety for consumers. AIs could end forced work, usher in universal income, and leisure for all. Partnering with AI will make us smarter and more capable than ever before. AI sexbots will almost completely eliminate rape, spousal abuse, pedophilia, loneliness, and the hate and violence that incels wreak, not only in the West, but importantly in Islamic countries, where angry young incels are the fuel for Jihad. High quality, low cost, ubiquitous sex dolls could also end most sexually transmitted diseases.
I could go on about all the solutions waiting for us to accept them, but this is already too long. 🙂 And when I write these firehose descriptions I know people tend to roll their eyes and dismiss the lot.
Okay, I’ll try that again and maybe you can delete my messed up version.
I know how you feel. It all often feels just overwhelming… and I live on the other side of the planet. This is exactly why I like to read science information. It quite regularly offers hope, while still informing me of the dangers facing us.
This year I intend to withdraw from social media. I’ve been neglecting my blog too much, even though it’s a much better medium for me to toy with complex ideas. (I recently was told by someone on facebook that they don’t read my posts because they’re too long. 🙂 )
Good luck to you for 2025 and onward. It promises to be a fraught year. Even here in Australia we’re unlikely to escape the damage if Trump manages to crash the world economy. (Amazing that one moron could do that.)
It is immeasurably worse for all my gay friends trying to survive in some African countries — failed states that are imploding under the weight of corruption and religion. I’m expecting many won’t live to see 2026, whether due to starvation, or disease, or being beaten to death or set on fire by the good Christians around them. I promised that I’d gradually stop helping them this year. Financially, I desperately need to stop, but in many cases I’m the only reason some of them are still alive. 😦 That’s a deep well of despair with no apparent bottom.
Hopefully I’ll write more stories this year. In order to improve, I must write more. Also, I want to get back to building virtual worlds, and hopefully, just maybe, realise my dream of making a story that plays out inside a virtual world — like a movie you can walk around inside.
Thanks for being persistent, Miriam! Most of his power comes through social media and now those in control will help that even more, which is all the more reason to find other ways to stay connected and informed. It’s hard to witness danger and harm and be helpless. We can only do the best we can. My heart goes out to your friends.
Damn. My paragraph spacing was swallowed by the software and I can’t see a way to edit it. 😦
🙂 I know how you feel. It all often feels just overwhelming… and I live on the other side of the planet. This is exactly why I like to read science information. It quite regularly offers hope, while still informing me of the dangers facing us.This year I intend to withdraw from social media. I’ve been neglecting my blog too much, even though it’s a much better medium for me to toy with complex ideas. (I recently was told by someone on facebook that they don’t read my posts because they’re too long. 😀 )Good luck to you for 2025 and onward. It promises to be a fraught year. Even here in Australia we’re unlikely to escape the damage if Trump manages to crash the world economy. (Amazing that one moron could do that.)It is immeasurably worse for all my gay friends trying to survive in some African countries — failed states that are imploding under the weight of corruption and religion. I’m expecting many won’t live to see 2026, whether due to starvation, or disease, or being beaten to death or set on fire by the good Christians around them. I promised that I’d gradually stop helping them this year. Financially, I desperately need to stop, but in many cases I’m the only reason some of them are still alive. 😦 That is a deep well of despair with no apparent bottom.Hopefully I’ll write more stories this year. In order to improve, I must write more. Also, I want to get back to building virtual worlds, and hopefully, just maybe, realise my dream of making a story that plays out inside a virtual world — like a movie you can walk around inside.