Avoiding Misanthropy

And entropy.

I thank you. I took a couple weeks off of writing here at Substack, and I did not receive a single query as to my absence. I choose to interpret your silence as grace, not disinterest.

I have been struggling a bit when thinking about what to write here. It’s not that I have writer’s block or anything like that. Most days I write between 1,000 and 2,000 words before I leave the house.

But those words are in a novel. I’m finding it harder to write in the afternoon, when I turn myself toward other media, like Substack. What I don’t want to write about, but what’s always on my mind, is how many things bother me.

Okay, not things. Persons.

The guy who walks through the locker room at the gym, dripping wet. He really bugs me. The drivers who precariously snake around other vehicles at the Costco gas station, just so they can fill up three minutes faster. The travelers who walk through the airport, talking on speakerphone, or sit at the gate, playing videos on their phones without earbuds (probably the same people, right?). All these people bug me, and I feel myself turning into the Get Off My Lawn Guy (although, to be honest, I love it when the neighborhood kids run through our yard).

Then something happens that snaps me back into reality. Like last week, when one of my brothers told Courtney and me about his recent trip to Rwanda, where the average salary is $1000 per year, and the tensions between the Tutsis and the Hutus are significant enough that another civil war is not out of the question.

The thing is, we had that conversation in Hawaii, on a beautiful vacation, as the sun set behind us, making even more poignant how good I’ve got it. What do I have to complain about?

Well, the blizzard that greeted us upon our return to Minnesota, for one. And the cold. And the shoveling (which Courtney did, because I was inside writing). That’s not abnormal for March in the Upper Midwest, of course, but I’m ready for spring. My friend, Amy, and I met last weekend to choose our garden seeds, which we will split (because no one needs ten rows of green beans). I’m ready to sit with my back against a tree and hope that a big tom turkey will notice my decoy and come in for a closer look. I’m ready to put the docks in the lake and to plant a bunch of trees where we had a timber harvest last fall.

Do you see what I’m doing? I’m blaming my misanthropy on winter. And I don’t think that’s entirely unfair. I can take winter in December, January, and February. But when it stretches into the second half of March, it’s a drag. And now my fellow humans are getting on my nerves.

So again, thanks for the couple weeks off.

And here’s to the vernal equinox next week. It’s about time.