I’m Still Here

I’m still here–and still healthy. One of my correspondents asked in an email if I had stopped writing on Contra because I’d caught the virus. I haven’t. Motivation and energy are an issue, with both in somewhat short supply. That said, the truth is that Contra is mostly for long-form essays, and I’ve been stumped for concepts recently. I don’t want to talk about the election. There’s nothing I could say that others haven’t said a zillion times. And the pandemic is depressing enough. Politics would put me into a coma.

There are other issues that I’m sure I could talk about, and I’m pondering one now, which I hope to post in the next few days. And I need to do an Odd Lots. What I need to do most of all, however, is stop waiting for a 3,000-word entry to occur to me. Personal energy might allow me to get the ideas, but it might not allow me to produce the copy.

So what I may do here is go back to short subjects for awhile. I may duplicate entries posted here on MeWe or possibly Facebook. I’m annoyed at Facebook for blocking a link to a news item because Facebook doesn’t like the site. They didn’t say the item itself was false or misleading. They just said that the site wasn’t trustworthy. Well–who’s trusting the New York Times these days? Mostly people who agree with them. Is that the future? All media becoming hyperpartisan and excluding links to sites for strictly ideological reasons? That’s pretty depressing too.

And that’s why I created an account on MeWe. Unlike Facebook, they don’t have enough subscribers to allow them to alienate 49% of their readers with stupid ideological posturing. The list of things they won’t allow is short and sensible: Nudity/porn, threats of violence, impersonating other people, etc. It does not pass judgment on legal content. It doesn’t sell ads or track users. It’s American-owned. Its business model depends, like so many others, on selling premium accounts. Whether that’s enough to keep them afloat over the long haul is debatable. But for now, with millions of disgruntled Facebook users flooding in, its future looks tolerably bright.

This entry is just to reassure you that I haven’t abandoned Contra. I’m going to spend a good part of the afternoon writing and queueing up some shorter entries that I will post in coming days. That’s what I did when I created Contra (and its predecessor, VDM Diary) 22 years ago. So everything old is new again…except maybe bell-bottoms and BASICA.