Holding Hands in the Dark - Part 2

Its been a long time.  Don't know why I stopped writing last February.  My last post detailed my last few adventurous days in our February 2020 trip to my favorite city,  Oaxaca, Mexico.  

 I just reread that post and I was struck by how far away all of that seems now even though it's been less than a year - but what a year it has been!  Pandemic, isolation, racial unrest, presidential election, impeachment,  invasion of the Capitol.  Its all left me feeling frazzled, fearful and angry. 

I think one of the reasons I haven't been writing is that these events have been so momentous and overwhelming that trying to encapsulate them and their impact on my life would be like trying to wrestle an elephant to the ground. But I do miss writing, so here I am pecking away at the keys trying to say something real, something worthwhile.  Most of the worth is probably as a personal therapy tool but I still hold out some hope that there are readers out there who will find some value in these disparate/desperate scribblings.

Along those lines,  I was amazed when I looked at the stats for this blog.  Since I started Right Now ten years ago there have been 16940 "views".  Yesterday there were 17 views and last month there were 79.  Who the hell are these people?  I haven't posted anything since last February!  Hell, maybe I'm going viral and can start getting paid as an "influencer."  I could start inserting ads for stuff and maybe get free samples.  Golf clubs? Jameson's? Tequila? Guitars? Irish golf trips?

It makes me happy that others are interested in sharing this journey with me.  As I said in my first post in 2010 entitled "Holding Hands in the Dark"

I am starting this blog as a way to connect. Connect with guiding forces which will help me find my way through this tricky end game. The form, timing and content of these hoped for hand holders through the dark are far from being clear. I invite you to be part of this journey and perhaps we can hold each other's hand along the way.

I honestly get a chill when I read these words.  Not because its great prose but because the concept of  us holding each others hands as we try to make our way through the dark captures what I feel is our best hope during these dire times.  Maybe you feel the same way.  

The clearest personal lesson of this past year of COVID isolation  is a deeper understanding of how much I need and long for real, honest human connection. 

  As Bob Dylan said in  "All Along the Watchtower"

There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now

The hour's getting late, 

Thanks for reading.  I will write again soon. I hope.