Coming Back To You

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

We humans like tidy stories and clear lines.

But life isn’t like that. Live is complicated and confusing, it has self returns, and winding paths.

Our republic can get lost all over the place. It has. You can say it was lost almost as soon as it was founded, and things crept in that should never have. But with al that, all the flaws and warts, and the last hundred years marred by statist idiots (to be fair it is almost impossible to escape the infection of the age and the twentieth century was a time of centralizing power) it is still the best place on Earth and the hope of mankind.

Which makes me feel much better, because I swear the last 20 years have been a saga of pushing forward, recovery, falling down again, recovery again…. rinse repeat.

Now, there are signs of hope. Despite the fact I’ve been coughening (totally a word) for the last month and a half straight, first of one thing, then of another, I have been able to do things that seemed impossible in Colorado, like start reformatting older books and putting them out, now looking prettier and with paper editions. (I Dipped Stripped and Dead and French Polished murder, because that series should have a new issue next month, then All Hot for shifters, and then a Darkship book (I’m divided on which one.))

Anyway, there are these completely normal things, like assigning isbns that I kept giving up on in Colorado like it was too much effort…. And my brain wasn’t working quite right.

I think something to the altitude and chronic low oxygen was messing me up. There might have been depression along with that…

But I’m doing what I can to get back to me. To get back to where I should be and where I work.

We, none of us, know how long we have.

Okay, so we didn’t choose to live in the clownworld timeline, when the big floppy shoes come out and they’re all honking noses at each other.

But it is what we have and it is where we are. Yeah, we should prepare and do our best to survive whatever this crazy year throws at us, and frankly, after 2020 we’re none of us very trusting what that will be, right?

But–

But it’s still you, and still your life. Don’t put it off waiting for times to be better, for things to be easier, for a better time to be you.

I’m finally — hopefully releasing later this year, and yeah, all of you will hate it, but it needs out — writing the world that has been with me for 46 years, because… Well, if I get to the other side, and it died trapped in my head? It’s just not right. It was given to me for a reason, even if everyone ends up hating it.

I’ve packed my bags, I’m walking up hill. I’m trying not to hurry, because I’m afraid of getting sick and lost again.

But I am coming back to me.

Because who else am I going to come back to being?

I’m hoping to be me as hard as I can, clown world or not.

91 thoughts on “Coming Back To You”

  2. Glad to hear you’re doing better!

    I never set out to be a rebel, these last few years. I was just me, doing what I always did, and as the world went crazy around me, I just stuck to my normality, and helping the people caught in it.

    I take comfort in reading accounts of WWII, of how many members of the underground and the various resistances were exactly the same: people who opted out of mass psychosis, and continued to be themselves, and help their neighbors instead of the mobs and the government that whipped them up and howled the same mad song.

    Even so, I’m not the same person I used to be. After years of dealing with illness and injury, I find that this has been a crucible that burned away a lot of what I used to be, for good and for ill… and now, as I work on recovering physical ability after years of illness and injury, I can take stock of what got lost, and start building it back into my life, or taking the steps to get there.

    Here’s to the road ahead, and the companions on the journey there!

    1. What I wonder is, what makes people do that? And what makes people not?

      We’ve all seen the NPC memes, and most of us have seen it in action. I don’t understand why people do that, but I don’t think I can accept that people who do can do no other. It feels like that way leads to streets linens with lamp-posts. At the same time I don’t understand it.

    2. I never set out to be a rebel,

      Good.

      My first memory of wanting to tell someone to get off my lawn was someone thinking rebel without a cause was a Really Awesome thing to be, rather than even dumber than being a blind follower.

  3. The Road goes ever on and on
    Down from the door where it began.
    Now far ahead the Road has gone,
    And I must follow, if I can,

  4. There have been time was I was a “rebel” or “counter culture” for what I considered to be simple (anything but) common sense. I doubt I’ll HATE whatever it is, but I might find it a wee bit strange… OR… might find it overdue. Never can tell.

    1. The fun part is when you can manage to be a revolutionary, and a member of the-old-order-what-must-be-brought-down, and a radical, and an anti-radical, all by not changing your positions on anything.

      2. Oh yeah. France/western Europe 1788-1815 being one example. Now? “Men and women are different, but should get paid the same if they do the same jobs in the same way with the same time-in-service.” Duuuuuude, either wildly radical (1950’s) or counterrevolutionary monarchist (2023.)

        1. This is the stuff that makes my poor old Aspergers head hurt. There’s one or two obvious, measurable solutions. Get busy and figure out the best one, and get on with it. Or, admit that you’ve got an ulterior motive and get on with that instead. But say that out loud and the Normies go insane.

          Phantom: “Look Norm, there is a moose head on the table. Are we not going to talk about the large hairy moose head with the really big antlers?”

          Every Normie Ever: “You can’t SAY that! How dare you!”

          Phantom: “Yep, nice moose head you got there dudes. Not really going to shut up about it, now that you p—ed me off.”

          Similarly, Normies having opinions about things like gravity. When you become a Grown Up you have to accept that your opinion simply does not matter. Gravity does not care what you think, it will continue to dump you on your ass every single time.

          Say that aloud in some circles and you will get called all manner of bad things.

  5. Glad you are doing well virtual niece of mine.
    But please never lose your innate ability to generate typos and malapropisms. Fixing those for you gives my life meaning and purpose.
    Without you, Dave, Amanda, and a few others I would become just another crotchety old retired grump.

  6. “We humans like tidy stories and clear lines…”
    Because in life we have messy stories and no lines that can be discerned. What people are looking for is comfort. That can take many forms, as one’s comfort can range from a quiet book on a sunny couch (one of my faves) to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane just for the experience.

  8. I’m reminded of my littlest brother, who became a vegan when he was a young adult (sigh). He relates how he smelled hamburgers at a party one day and his body took over and marched him right to the grill and demanded he eat this, right now. And colors came back into his life, and his brain fog cleared up. There are some people who thrive as vegans, I suppose, but not my brother.

    Perhaps your higher O2 content is doing the same thing. Oh, I do hope so. May all the colors bloom.

    1. “There are some people who thrive as vegans, I suppose…”

      Not really, no. This is one of those popular moose heads I was talking about above. One of my pet-hates as it happens.

      Straight vegan diet is an asceticism, and definitely, measurably bad for you. Humans are built to eat meat, and all the pro-vegan propaganda in the universe can’t change that. I do grant that there are some people who tolerate it better than others.

      Cue the vegan proselytizers to begin their REEEEEE call. Humans do not have cow teeth, vegans. We are omnivores. Deal with it.

  9. I’m not crazy about being a rebel. I just want to be left alone. Unfortunately, Democrats, liberals, socialists, communists, Marxists of all stripes, and other people of totalitarian inclination, have a pathological need to screw with and boss around other people.

    1. Yep, the old story about what happens when the ‘Men who wanted to be left alone’ aren’t. In a way, that’s kind of what my ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ series is about.

    2. Hopefully this isn’t a dupe…

      Yes, the old story about what happens when the ‘Men who wanted to be left alone aren’t. In a way, my ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ series is about that situation.

  10. I’m glad to hear you are better. If you are reformatting, may I ask eventually for “May You Write Interesting Books”? Please? I think it’s good and practical, but would benefit from some polishing.

  11. Dorothy Thompson wrote an article in Harper’s back in the day called Who Goes Nazi? It’s one of my favorite pieces and I find myself musing the same way about my family, friends, and acquaintances. WuFlu showed me I’d overestimated most of them.

    The money quote:

    “The people in the room think he is not an American, but he is more American than almost any of them. He has discovered America and his spirit is the spirit of the pioneers. He is furious with America because it does not realize its strength and beauty and power. He talks about the workmen in the factory where he is employed. . . . He took the job “in order to understand the real America.” He thinks the men are wonderful. “Why don’t you American intellectuals ever get to them; talk to them?””

    Blue Pill and Black Pill need to realize this, Red Pill already does.

    1. Intellectuals… spit

      There was a time when I ran in academic intellectual circles, and in many ways it was exhilarating. I learned a lot, had some experiences (like traveling overseas to present at a conference) that I still treasure, and met some cool people. Some. I had many, many more experiences that remind me of the South Park episode with the apocalyptic cloud of smug and all the wineglass-twirling fartsniffers.

      Most of them can’t really go Nazi because they were already there; it’s just one small step sideways from where they’ve always been.

      1. I’m not sure how to embed links here, it always gets me in trouble. The article Is on the Harper’s Magazine site. It’s a classic so it’s fairly easy to find under the Title or Author. Well worth the read, see who you recognize.

        1. I wonder if what I’m working with is a Mr. C, or at least a potential one?

          I also wonder if that is one of the core types of this generation? People who have had to work their tails off just to tread water, and are simultaneously told they are supposed to be gods and a pox upon the earth?

              3. If you click on TXRed’s link, it’ll take you to a paywalled version.

                If you highlight the lick, copy the URL and paste it into your browser, it takes you to the full not-paywalled version.

                At least, in Brave on my desktop computer.

    3. Blue Pill and Black Pill need to realize this, Red Pill already does.

      Oh, they half-recognize it. But they mistake accident for essence and think the solution is to make everyone a factory worker again.

      Nevermind that they have to wipe 70 years of production technology off the face of the earth to get the kind of factory they want.

      1. I think the workmen are still much the same as they ever were. The work has changed, but the basic decency of the American working class hasn’t.

        1. I’d rather hang out with tradesmen and women than with self-proclaimed intellectuals. Especially “public intellectuals.”

    4. An excellent essay – I’ve remembered it for simply decades. It was one of the things that stood out in my mind when I was going through all the old bound periodicals in my college library. It was written in 1941 – the war had been going on for almost two years, but before Pearl Harbor, so the US was still technically neutral.

      1. The problem I have with that essay is the way it implicitly swallows the Great Fraud of the 20th century: That fascism and Nazism were completely totally 100% the opposite from each other. So the people who went International Socialist didn’t count as having turned bad and anti-American the way those who went National Socialist did.

        The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.

        FA Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

    5. “I’m not an intellectual, I can think for myself.”

      — Steve Matuchek, “Operation Chaos”, Poul Anderson, 1971

  12. Ever watch an old black and white western? I do believe that those movies as unrealistic as they are, do depict the american spirit better than most. We’ll put up with a lot of crap but eventually we get it right, of course there is generally lots of gun play and some good men die along with the bad. Must be what Jefferson meant about the tree of Liberty needing to be replenished every now and again. Must be why the Liberals want to get rid of Jefferson. Interesting how we try to live up to that image, even the bad guys do, they just don’t think they’re the bad guys.

    1. Just to be clear, I am not the John Wayne type, boots just won’t fit, but I am the guy riding with him in the posse. I am generally the one riding next to the Carl of the group.

    1. MGC can refer to: Machine Gun Corps. Malvern Girls College. Massachusetts General Court, legislature of that U.S. state. Media Gateway Controller, a device in Voice over IP networks. Medical Grade Cannabis. Megestrol caproate, a progestin. Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. Melbourne Girls’ College, Mississippi Gaming Commission, Missouri Gaming Commission, Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Who/what is it?

          1. glances down at chest Nope, not a guy. 😉 Sarah’s the only Mormon Male (with a Great Rack). But Dave Freer really is a guy (unless he’s a spiny lobster who types really, really well.)

    2. I’m frustrated that it hides the author’s name by default. I’m not a writer, but some of the columns by certain people have much for non-writers.

      OTOH, there are those who put their name in the first line. (Waves to virtual TXRed). That helps a lot.

  16. Why I am studying instead of writing. Because that’s me and it’s a skillset thing anyway. But there’s one story…

  18. My t-shirt with a quote from Marcus Aurelius says “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

    Partly why we moved out of California.

    1. Google Translate suggests the Latin for that might be “Pluribus vitae obiectum non est, sed ut in phreneticis ordinibus evadat.”

      I like “phreneticis”. Cool word.

  19. The US government has bombed or otherwise murdered civilians in more than 20 countries in the last 30 years, countries with whom we were not at war…Until Americans wake up and demand an end to such grossly ruthless, immoral, and damaging (to America as well as the world) behavior, I don’t see any hope for a better world, or a better America…

        1. Terrorists are, after all, civilians. That’s what makes them unlawful combatants.

          The judgement of “murder” is an argument on legality, though, and it’s not as if his judgement has been such that one can just assume that “Shooting back” doesn’t get automatically shoved into “murder” in his book.

          1. It’s not as if most of these countries we bombed or attacked did anything to harm the US..e.g.Yemen, Serbia, Libya and so on, including Afghanistan…

            1. Fanboi-ing for the Iranians, now?

              Or playing the usual game where the poor widdle brown people aren’t really people, so the Houthi can’t be blamed for what they do?

              Did you forget about the whole ‘genocide’ thing in Serbia? Has been a couple of decades, after all…

              For Libya, do you mean after the Marine barracks bombing? Or do you mean the UN security council actually trying to stop slaughter of civilians?

              Oh, wait. You threw in Afghanistan there, too.

              So you’re just throwing out metric bull feces to take advantage of the way it takes way more effort to refute BS than to copy-paste it.

            2. The Cole bombing wasn’t a thing that happened? The Huthis shooting missiles towards (I can’t really say “at”. Their targeting sucks) US ships*? And Saudi and Egyptian ships too. Say what you will about entangling alliances, once you’re in them you’re sort of obligated to defend your treaty partners. Even if i do think Saudi meddling is the cause of a lot of crap in the ME that we could and should otherwise stay out of. We made our alliances. We should keep to them the extent that WE can. Even if switching sides for advantage is a thing there.

              We did try to negotiate with the Afghan government, or what passed for it. You’ll note that we DIDN’T bomb Pakistan, or surrounding areas, when we went in for OBL, and I’m quite certain their government had at least some inklings of where he was that they weren’t sharing.

              Now I’ll grant you Serbia wasn’t a threat to the US, but they were a threat to a fragile European peace that had just emerged from fifty years of Cold War and could have easily become another global conflagration. That is where WWI started, after all. If someone had applied pressure at the time before Austria and Russia got into it and brought all their friends along, it might not have been as bad.

              *Fair warning. I was ON the ship the missiles were being fired towards. I have views on that sort of thing.

      2. Not true..I see lots of hope for Americans who are spiritual and treat their neighbors like brothers and sisters if they want to be so treated…The current American surveillance and money printing state can’t survive, but we have the seeds to forge one that works…

        2. So… what do you do if the neighbors don’t want to be treated like brother and sisters and, in fact, would prefer that all the Americans would die so they can take our stuff without us objecting?

        3. Did you slither over here from the camel’s lair with this crap?

          Have you not been paying attention the last two years to how so many brothers and sisters sold out their family over a Covid jab? Get off my lawn.

    2. “grossly ruthless, immoral, and damaging”

      The main problem with the way that the US has fought “the savage wars of peace” is that the US hasn’t been ruthless ENOUGH. If we are going to fight a war, then we need to repeat WWII — or don’t waste our blood and treasure by half measures.

    3. Maybe you could try voting for the Orange Man “Let’s make a deal!” guy who liked to talk to the Russians instead of kill them with Ukrainian troops? Because when you’re still talking, nobody dies.

      Just a thought, eh?

      1. Not to mention the way he was beating Putin like a rented mule at the same time. Oil, anybody?

        1. The cry of “Russian Collusion!” was (among other things) yet another example of the Left projecting like World War 2 searchlights.

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