I have been ill. I came down with Covid Omicron for the second time, a new variant, almost two weeks ago. And the fever, body aches, and loss of appetite, though it wasn’t enough to kill me, really tore up most of my opportunities to write meaningfully. I got downright depressed with my inability to put words together. Chocolate helped. Walks in the park sapped my energy, by also helped. But due to diabetes and, you know…. being sick with Covid, I couldn’t do enough of either of those things. So, I turned to YouTube and got hooked on philosophers all over again.
If you have seen any of my philosophy posts before, you know who my go-to wise guys are. Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Soren Kierkegaard, Walt Whitman, and Danny Kaye can always give me philosophical bacon bits to chew on, even when I am suffering severe loss of appetite from having Covid again. (What do you mean Danny Kaye is not a philosopher? Have you seen the Court Jester? The Inspector General? You can live your life by the philosophies of the characters he plays… I mean, the mis-identified country bumpkins behind the puffed-up reputations of the popinjays the communities mistake him for.)
Being angry is easy. Being happy is hard.
While I was feeling sorry for myself and letting Crazy Freddy (Nietzsche) tell me, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” my blog fell off a log and into the bog in the fog. I try to get at least 50 views per day. But apparently too many reposted old blogs didn’t fill in for me when I was too ill to write. I haven’t gotten down to 0 since my first year of blogging. But I was down to 20 for the first time in four years. And I averaged in the 30s. I am therefore due to come back as strong as the Mighty Thor. Right?
The Stoics remind us that we really can’t control things like the blog’s readership and their enthusiasm or lack thereof. I have to learn to accept certain things about myself as a writer. Franz Kafka and H. P. Lovecraft during their lifetimes were writing in obscurity, never living to see their work catch on and be recognized. And both of them were talented writers. Both of them were better writers than I am. So, I should not fret about living in obscurity and being ignored by the reading public. Life and writing are not about wealth and fame. My books exist, at least for now, and that has to be enough.
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I have already written and published 21 books. I have to accept the fact that I won’t be able to create many more. But that is a good number to leave behind.
Philosophers eventually get around to telling me that life is meaningless unless you bother to make your own meaning. And, it turns out, I have already done that. I could die tomorrow fully fulfilled in life. What I have accomplished as a teacher and a cartoonist, and a writer, is enough.
Catch a Falling Star 