Obsessions

Well, I've been obsessively reading blogs since I discovered them last January when my discovery of them coincided with and fed several of my obsessions. Those referred to in the subtitle above: Reading, Writing, Thinking & Being. But most especially my obsession with freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and the impact on them of the Bush administration, the Iraq war, the Economy and the political climate since Election 2000 followed by 9/11 and the new "Dissent = Treason" meme. As I will relate here later, when I have more time, I spent the first 37 years of my life in the mental prison called Fundamentalism. I just spent the last 12 years strenuously and painfully and meticulously extricating myself from it. And just as I was about to find the courage to start speaking my true mind, the whole entire country seemed about to be taken over by clones of the enforcers of thought that I had just finally convinced myself were in a slim minority and thus of no danger to me or my mind anymore.

So, as you can imagine, my current obsession is with today's election. And has been since the nightmare of Election 2000. I wish I could stay online and stay plugged into my favorite blogs all day. They are so much more reliable than CNN or any of the other TV based news sources. So much more interesting too. At least the ones I frequent. I wish I had time to add links to some of my favorites but I'm going to have to give up the computer any minute. I only have dibs on it from about 10pm to about 5am when my in-laws get up. My husband and I have been living with them since he lost his dot.com job and we found ourselves living on the streets of Santa Clara for two weeks in August 2001. Hence my obsession with the economy. A story for another time.

I usualy go to bed about now but I have to stay up until the library opens this morning as that is where I need to go drop off my ballot. Oregon has a vote by mail system but you can turn in your ballot at various sites right up until polls close at 8pm. All library branches and the County Elections Office are among the sites. I meant to do it yesterday but it took me five hours to fill it out. Here in Oregon, we have a plethora of initiatives and I am an inveterate procrastinator. I thought I knew my position on all of them and it would only take me a few minutes and then I could sleep and get up at noon to walk it over to the library. But then, wanting to be a conscientious voter this first time out since 96, I started reading the voter pamphlets. And next thing I knew my brain was scrambled. I consider myself a seasoned reader, practiced at finding the meat of a paragraph and getting the point to be got. But I was reading the silly pamphlet for an hour before I realized that the "In favor" and "In opposition" entries were not a 'just the facts mam' rendition. They were, in fact, paid advertisements and some needed to be held at arms length with clothespin for the nose. Like many of the TV ads. But at arms length I can't read them. I could barely read them at six inches from my nose. What with the small print on newsprint easily smudged by handling. Especially hard for someone who is vissualy impaired as I am. Legally blind from RP aka Tunnel vision. A story for another time.

Thus it was after noon Monday by the time I finished shading in the little ovals on my ballot and I had not slept nor eaten and with the eyestrain and sleep depravation, I was in no shape to be wandering the streets by myself. So I postponed it. But I am in little better shape now after a seven hour stint on the computer and having had only three hours of sleep Monday evening. And I still have to wait four hours before I can leave here. Probably should get a nap instead of trying to stay up to do it. But I am so afraid I will oversleep, or wake up with a headache. Or some other thing that makes me unfit to walk out on my own.

Well I just ran out of time. Gotta sign off until tomorrow night.