Echoes from My Past Reinvigorate

This blog has (obviously) been on hiatus and you may have wondered why (or not). While nothing is really that simple, the simplest answer is that I found the current socio-political situation just too depressing, polarized, and entrenched to invest my increasingly limited energy into writing about it, feeling as though I’d either be preaching to the choir or screaming into a vacuum. Neither seemed worthwhile, plus, most of the time, I concluded that I had nothing of significance to add to my previous offerings.

So what has changed? Why emerge from hibernation now?

I arrived home Wednesday to a package, sent by my last high school girlfriend who had inexplicably saved all the letters I sent her through my first year of college. Inspired by an advice column in her local newspaper, she took the time to find my address and mail them to me (making sure to note that I wasn’t that special, she saved EVERYBODY’s letters!). While I’ve been wading through the 40+ epistles (she was right on target, I certainly wasn’t that special), I realized I wrote A LOT of letters (and, based on references in those missives, to a number of people).

As embarrassing as those letters are (Carolyn, thankfully, has shown zero interest in reading any of them; we long since concluded that my former self would not have been the least bit attractive to her.), what I quickly came to realize is that writing isn’t just something I do (obviously for fun, clearly not for profit), rather something I NEED. Looking back, I recognize that it was also something I did, regularly, throughout my teaching career (former colleagues will remember the union local’s most powerful weapon, TGIF), plus the occasional “Random Thoughts” memo after that newsletter disappeared (and, IMO, the local’s power went into decline).

While I always said that I wrote this blog for myself, that packet of letters from the past (I may have mentioned how embarrassing I find them now!) reminded me of the importance of continuing to write, not for the benefit of any particular audience (although I will not deny I do like having an audience, no matter how small, which may explain, at least to a certain extent, why I have a blog instead of a diary), but for my own mental health and well-being.

So, fair warning. Don’t Get Berndt is (probably) getting a re-boot. Whether it informs, entertains or (even) annoys you, this I do for me.