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12/13/2005 Archived Entry: "Life changes/screw government"

THE ONE THING YOU CAN SAY FOR CERTAIN ABOUT GOVERNMENT is that everything it does will make matters worse. Like the Patriot Act renewal -- which leaves all the police-state dross in place, adds a few purely cosmetic and toothless "safeguards," and (as always) adds even more gross offenses against American citizens.

It's a no-brainer: New law equals bad law; regulation equals freedom-stealing regulation. The occasional exception is so rare that it's certainly not worth wasting time watching and hoping for. Even when a law passes that contains some freedom improvements (rare), the same bill is invariably also larded with police-statisms.

So why write about it? I mean, I'm glad others do. But after all these years, I feel I've done my bit.

Might as well just sit back, relax, and wait until things get bad enough for the system to break.

So as I approach December 21, the day I disconnect I look forward to the opportunity to have fewer of the state's horrors thrown in my face every day.

Yet professionally I'm tied into politics. Everything I write -- anyhow, everything I get paid to write -- is "political" in the broad sense. So as I look forward to the next fork in my life's path, I fear that I'm being held to the old direction by a mess of muddy muck -- by having to pay constant attention to things that degrade life, rather than enhance it. In short, by having to pay attention to every effing little thing the police-statists do.

This works tolerably as long as I can limit the portion of my life and thoughts I give to these topics. But that isn't always possible. Clients have perfectly reasonable needs that they expect a perfectly reasonable writer to meet.

When their needs clash with mine, I can momentarily become a perfectly unreasonable writer. Poor clients. And recently one client even prompted me to become much more political in my writing. Again, perfectly reasonable from the client's perspective, but that request really forced me to think about just what I am -- and am not -- willing to do to earn a living.

One of the things I'm going to do within this next year is seek outlets for entirely non-political writing. I want to wash the muck of the state off my feet as much as possible and be more free to move ahead.

Posted by Claire @ 09:29 AM CST
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