I missed the 20-year anniversary of my college graduation by a day, but under the circumstances, you know. You’ll have that.
Twenty years ago I got a graduation ceremony—in fact I got two of them, one for the College of Design and one for Iowa State University Class of 2000 as a whole—whereas this year’s graduates get a webcast.
Halfway between then and now, I wrote about assorted life lessons at another blog.
Now we are living through a greater unraveling, and, yeah.
Read More →My life has reached a point where it feels like the year may as well end in early November. Because working toward the November election looms so large each year, consumes so much effort in every form, and this year even accounted for so much of my paid professional work…
I wake up about one week into November, not only with a jet lagged mystification about how I went from Memorial Day to late Autumn so quickly, but exhausted, and at something of a loss for what purpose these several more weeks in the calendar year serve.
With the 2010s closing out, it feels like I should review the past decade as well as the past year, but the past decade for me has mostly been the tale of two half-decades. The five years 2010-14 were largely personal: personal projects, solitude, lots of “me time,” personal life dramas, a lot of reading and writing and travel and reflection.
This began changing steadily each year, right from the beginning of 2015, in a way that almost feels scripted.
Read More →A couple of weeks ago I came across this 2015 post, “Requiem for Young Adulthood.” Looking toward my approaching 37th birthday and the stage of life beyond it, I mostly drew a big blank:
…ambitions are difficult to establish here. I have some sense that this transition to the middle phase of life is often marked by a realization that one has probably reached one’s station in life, and that while one might achieve more, achieving significant new status in life is long odds. […]
At the moment I can see maybe four, maybe five years out at most. Basically, I’m researching a third book, and I recently had an idea for a different type of large project to pursue whenever “Book Three” is finished. Hopefully it will pan out, because life seems kind of thin these days aside from such pursuits. (Seems kind of thin even with them, actually.)
Life seems very different in some big ways. Certainly I would not describe my life since 2015 as thin.
Thinking back on the year, I completely forgot about attending the March for our Lives until browsing through photos for this post.
Instead it’s busy, and it’s a blur, and I am so very, very, very tired. This year’s holidays were nice but after looking forward much of this year to a break and some rest it was over so quickly and now another year rushes toward me with multiple big projects already underway and who knows what else in store.
I think that it sums up a lot of my personal year to say that, on Thanksgiving
As regards point one, I miss Halloween, or rather I miss being able to enjoy Halloween in much of any way. If you are really active in electoral politics, then it kind of crowds out Halloween.
(Granted, plenty of societies hold general elections at other times of year than our American early November, but since Halloween is still mostly an American holiday as far as I know, this is a meaningful general rule.)
I used to enjoy Halloween rather more, for all that I didn’t really do a whole lot for it as an adult. Living in an apartment one doesn’t have trick-or-treaters, and I have not been invited to a lot of Halloween parties. But I liked the holiday, and the candy, and other trappings. Eight years ago I wrote a whole series of posts on my old blog, and while a content-mill ethic played a part in them, the enthusiasm was mostly still sincere.
Now, Halloween has become really overshadowed by both campaign activities, and by anxiety that judgment draws very close for an effort that has taken up the best part of the whole year.
Feeling kind of like the Giving Tree at the end of the story.
I’m writing, these days, but it doesn’t involve much fun research or exploration. Much of what I write is for political campaigns and causes. I write most entries for state representative candidate Mike Skindell’s blog, for example.
I have a list of subjects that I have wanted to look into, when time and energy permits, but so far it’s still just a list. Either time or energy have been wanting at most points this year.
Recently, though, inspiration was somehow enough to profile a complete stranger in a satisfying little human-interest article for the local newspaper. It should appear in the printed Lakewood Observer on Wednesday.
Jamie Garrett is a server at Deagan’s Kitchen, an expecting mother, and an aspiring forensics student.
The fact that she’s missing most of one arm is a fact of life, but it doesn’t define her identity.
You can read the rest online also.
So much going on. Yet so much of it is political, and taking to my personal blog (which is barely more than a diary) to comment on that seems kind of naive.
Not that I wouldn’t write a long, indulgent post expressing my views on e.g. Lakewood’s political tug-of-war that is now into its fourth consecutive year. But given how much my days are packed with the kind of inelegant campaign activity that actually reaches people, I suppose I just can’t bring myself to expend the effort required by any kind of deep essay.
I’m currently doing… a lot of work for two candidates for state representative, plus some work for another, and for two state senate candidates. I’m writing, for publication, where it makes sense… the latest LO included my promo for next week’s Lakewood Dem Club meeting, and an article encouraging support for Issue 1. (It also includes an ad I designed for one of the rare nonpolitical clients.)
Last week I made a day trip to Detroit for political organizing.
I dream of capturing once more a life beyond all this. But certainly not before May 8, and probably not for some while after that, really.
Oh well. This morning is relatively calm, and I was going to jot down some thoughts about The Infinity War (comic book series) stirred up by recent ballyhoo for the big feature film… then I found that I already wrote such a post three years ago. So.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My experience of last year mostly lent itself to sorting into two categories: political, and other.
Whereas in 2017, “other” was probably more like an appendix than a proper category.
There were reasons, about which I have written here among other places, but it also was just kind of something that happened. I started 2017 with a loose arrangement to provide graphic design for Tristan Rader’s campaign for Lakewood City Council, e.g.; by the beginning of summer I had effectively become designer, writer, director of communications, secretary and assistant campaign manager. Without ever having planned or even explicitly decided to do any of that.
My own year of 2017 might best be captured by a chain of relatively minor events from October. On October 26, I made a very fast trip to Columbus, to testify in favor of congressional redistricting reform at a statehouse hearing. (I was named though not quoted in a cleveland.com article.)
Mr. Kuhns goes to Columbus
A few days ago, I was out walking and had this feeling like I was coming out of a trance… to find that four months had passed.
I have written here about similar feelings twice in the past 13 months, so all I can really say is that this was a similar experience with a new intensity.
I looked around me and saw trees at the very end of their fall-color peak period. Then I thought back and could recall no other sense of the season, equally solid, since the beginning of July.
I recall being in Lakewood’s July 4 parade…
…then I was out for a walk and autumn was into its downhill half.
The best way I can think to describe it is that for the first several months of this year, it was like life was on fast-forward. It felt like time passed more rapidly than normal, but I could still perceive events around me, at an accelerated pace. Then since this post, it became more like just skipping from brief glimpse to brief glimpse, with everything in between jumped over entirely.
This was basically a year of my life. I sacrificed the year, to political action of various types, but above all to Tristan Rader’s campaign for Lakewood City Council.
Kristine, Tristan and me back at the campaign’s formal kickoff
Imagine my reaction since, entirely contrary to my expectations, we succeeded.
Summer has basically been and gone since my last entry here. It feels like autumn already, too. With hurricanes, fire or drought afflicting much of the U.S., I have no complaints at all about an early autumn, itself, certainly.
But honestly, I scarce know where this year went.
Since… I think it was with the real intense push against Trumpcare in the Senate that things “went to 11” and stayed there. Since then, life has just been full, whatever happens. All day, every day of the week, every week.
I have obtained more than 130 signatures for the Fair Districts ballot measure. And that’s like a when-possible activity, that fits into such “gaps” in my schedule as I can identify.
This past week was relatively calm. Yet it included
