Capturing Chaos

I’ve never been a celebrations type of person, and as I get older I prefer to spend most of my time to myself, and observe the various kinds of human madness from the sidelines. So, I spent xmas eve, and the day, doing exactly what I normally do—surfing the web (pretty boring on holidays, I can tell you), reading, writing, and watching movies.

Up to a point, observation is a great source for ideas, but writing about my observations doesn’t always work out. Too much of what I see is depressing, and the appropriate comments on human nature just sound like complaining. I try not to complain about what can’t be changed, especially when it comes to how other people live their lives. They do what they’ve been conditioned to do, what their temperaments bias them toward, and what society offers them. They’re insiders and I’m an outsider, and our views of the world are very different.

Which leads to the Lemonade Award, which was kindly given to me by Ambrosiavenus at Chronicles of Caelan , and which I have declined. I understand the purpose of the award, which is to highlight bloggers whose writing is worth your attention. That’s an admirable motive, but it’s something I already do by adding people to my blogroll, and by quoting them now and then, and pointing to their blogs.

I never participate in meme exchanges, chains, or whatever they’re called—for several reasons. They’re burdensome in their requirements, they’re often trivial and intrusive, and I have a natural antipathy to being roped into doing something that everybody else thinks is fun. I don’t have the time or energy to look through my bookmarks, pick out ten people to award, and then notify each of them. Memes that aren’t simply for a bit of amusement usually ask questions that I have no interest in answering. I’m a private person, and I not only keep the details of my life private, I don’t understand why anybody else would even care about them. My About pages give as much information as I’m willing to give, and that’s where it stops.

As for what I’ll be doing on new year’s eve, in case anybody wonders, the same thing I did on xmas eve.

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