The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Used to be Midlife Crises came when we were shocked to realize youth had lost its bloom and wouldn’t be coming back. Although … guys bought red sportscars and their wives dyed their grey hairs and considered plastic surgery. A new set of wheels or breasts usually didn’t work — truth was, what they mourned was the end of dreams. The corporate man was never going to backpack Europe or write the Great American Novel. And his trophy wife was not going back to college for a degree in sociology. Even if the kids were….

But I’m seeing friends who are going through a different crisis, the one where mortality is closing in and so is the realization that their life was mostly mortgaged, maybe even subprimed and now the equity seems puny and someone else may actually foreclose on it. They’re retired, time is not on their side and may never have been, and now the prospect of another hard winter is really bearing down. They think maybe a move might help. Go south, go back to their hometowns, look for a second childhood or adolescence, start over and see if the dice come up Lucky Sevens. They ask me: do you think I’m nuts to do this? And I say sure, (as if I got anything against being nuts)  but … if you’re not happy here, with what you got, with the life you made, I’d take a roll of the dice too.  Plus, it’s America.  We’re supposedly the adventurous, the brave, the pioneers.  We leave the known for the unknown.  We let optimism be our guide.  Complacency is the enemy.  Reinvent yourself!  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Go west, young man!  At least …. that’s what we tell ourselves.  Even if most of us have settled for a secure banality.

So maybe  it’s the winter of our discontent. Friends are dying, not a lot, but a start and our turn is in there somewhere. The community volunteerism isn’t working, the house has a leaky roof and the deck is rotted, retirement is surprisingly BORING, the walls are closing in and the trips to town are maddeningly uneventful. It’s as if the life we thought we’d built on sturdy foundations is sliding toward the bluff in incremental but steady tectonic lurches. We aren’t going to be rich and famous, money didn’t buy us love, religion was dumbed down to an embarrassingly blind faith devoid of anything resembling much more than a hope for another life in the after-world or prayers for winning the Lotto. We’re adrift, unmoored and untethered, and definitely uneasy.

I know. This is how I felt when I came here. For you pilgrims, be of cheerful heart! Sometimes the grass IS greener. Occasionally you CAN start over. Dreams DO come true in the once upon a times…. And happiness may actually be just over the next hill, the one you won’t find if you don’t go looking. Good luck!

The other morning I heard an NPR no doubt woke commentator prescribe a healthy dose of something, anything, upbeat to jumpstart our mornings, you know, set a more positive spin on the day, one that might last past noon. As a morning reader of two newspapers and multiple internet newsfeeds, I’m the poster child for beginning my day with mostly bleak harbingers for the morning, noon and probably afternoon, everything from ICE raids to indictments of the President’s detractors, Cat 5 hurricanes to vaccine deniers, gerrymandering to Gaza, on and on, basically doomscrolling for a less than cheerful breakfast. Even Dear Abby is consistently depressing. Cue the kitten videos, I guess. Or the makeup and clothing Influencers.

Maybe it’s time to mix a jigger or three of whiskey in that early morning cuppa joe, take the sharp edges off reality, give a good mood a fighting chance, probably need a nap early in the afternoon and then reload on the whiskey to plow through the evening, won’t need more coffee.

Outside our window the world really isn’t all that bleak or depressing. Sure, the mail comes late, it sometimes rains, occasionally I have to make that hellish drive up north for groceries and supplies, the power goes out in windstorms — but otherwise life is pretty peachy. Almost a sin to be depressed. Hellfire, it IS a sin to be anything but cheerful.

I didn’t move to the edge of a continent, the end of an island, the last vestige of the American Century to drown myself in the tears of the doomsayers. Maybe I didn’t reach escape velocity from Reality, but … I gave it a damn good shot. And if anyone thinks I’m plummeting back to terra firma, think again. Reality is in large part our own making — just ask most of us artists or musicians. Paint the world as you want it, then step inside the canvas. Oh, and don’t let those brushes dry out — it’s an ongoing process. Maybe every day. Like the NPR lady said….

When I ask my MAGA buddies what it is they like about the guy they voted for, they invariably say they want a biznessman in charge. They don’t care one pronoun about Woke stuff, DEI stuff, touch-feely B.S. — they want a capitalist, a captain of industry, a corporate magnate to steer the ship of state. They couldn’t care less if he’s been bankrupt a few times. They don’t give a damn if he left his contractors holding the bag. They don’t mind that he’s a chronic liar, a convicted felon, an egotistical womanizer or … well, much of anything, really, beyond the fact that he’s a billionaire. It goes without saying, without analysis, that if he’s filthy rich, he must be a savvy entrepreneur, exactly what this country needs.

The wealthy just want a fellow 1%’er to lower their taxes, get rid of burdensome regulations, cut the government down to size and protect their interests. The bizness of America, they will gladly tell you, is bizness, pure and simple. If they get richer, if more of us get rich, the money will trickle down to everyone. Sure, they’ll get more but fair is fair. Government needs to get out of their way!

A good biznessman, most folks will tell you, hires excellent people to surround him. Experts. Professionals. Trump gets rid of these people because they aren’t Yes Men. His people, sycophants all, are there to do his bidding and to flatter him endlessly. He is, he thinks, the smartest guy in any room. He listens to his gut. That right there is his genius.

This week he put blanket tariffs on nearly every country on earth, even some with no populations unless you count penguins or migrating birds. The price of nearly every imported product will be going up. Inflation will go up. A recession will be coming up too, more than likely now, if not, worse case, a full blown world Depression. The Dow and the S&P and the NASDAQ plunged, his advisors are calling each other morons and worse, the real bizness CEO’s are running around social media with hair-on-fire five alarm incredulity.

And my buddies are now desperate to get their retirement money out of the stock market which is a roller coaster ride every day. We’re going to find out soon if we elected a biznessman. Or just a tennis shoe salesman with dreams of grandeur.

dabbling-made-easy