Author: Matthew Groff

  • New Ideas to Work On

    I am trying to stick to my plan and just get the work done that I have been journaling and thinking about. Making the time, and even having to say no to kid this afternoon, which I feel awful about. I needed to hold myself to the promise that I had made which was that I was going to work.

    And then all these new ideas popped into my head today, and I have spent the day doing research and trying to figure out when I can get to these ideas.

    The idea is to look into what became of historical locations that have disapeared. Espically around here in the Northeast, progress has bulldozed over building and landscapes in the name of progress, and where history was made, in most cases is a subdivision, or a parking lot. It is an idea that asks the question how we lost our history, and were people aware that history was being lost.

    Not sure when I will get to it, but I like the idea.

  • I Missed a Day of Writing

    So… When I started working on this blog back in July, I decided that I was going to do things differently. in the past, I wrote something when the mood hit me, which meant that this blog was rather infrequent, lots of ebbs and flows of inspiration. The choice I made in July was to write at least one blog a day during the week, with the exception of holidays. I was going to treat it more like a job, a job that I enjoyed, but it was a job that I had to accomplish each day of the week. Large or small, I had to write a blog.

    Yesterday, I missed it.

    There was a window for me to get it accomplished, but I kept letting myself get pulled sideways. We are trying to get Covid tested, and then there was making the Thanksgiving shopping list, and it was a nice day out, so I wanted to make sure the kid got lots of park time, and then I got sucked down a Twitter-hole of checking on Trump’s efforts in Michagain.

    In that same vein of thought, It has been close to a month since I have worked on any of my fiction. At first I chalked it up to the coming election, as that was and still is dominating a great deal of my mental space. But it has been three weeks, and I think it is time to admit that I have fallen off the writing wagon.

    It is a matter of self discipline. I am lacking it, and also staying focused. This isn’t meant as a pity party, but more a matter of recalibration. We are still a long way from normal, or even a normal schedule, but I have to find a way to work within this situation.

  • Rudy’s Press Conference

    It’s just a #GreenShirtGuy world now.

  • The Doom Anxiety is Back

    Who else is still feeling the same level of anxiety you had before the election?

    That would be me.

    And most of my friends as well.

    Just about two hours ago, the Chancellor of the NYC Public schools announced that in-person classes will be cancelled due to the test infection rate is now above 3% in the city. Well… crap.

    There has been 100,000+ daily Covid infections for over the past week, as well as over 1,000 deaths.

    And we shouldn’t gather for The Holidays, but people are clearly going to gather for The Holidays

     We are clearly in a Second Wave, and for some of you, it might be a Third.

    And Trump won’t concede the election, which has the very high probability of make things worse as his administration is refusing to working with the incoming administration.

    2020 ain’t over yet, so I know it can still get worse.

    Like I said, I’m not feeling better.

    I haven’t really written anything other than these blogs, and that is due to my nonstop Doomscrolling. I keep checking to see if it is getting worse. This is clearly now a habit I have created for myself that I am not able to break, as my phone is connected to me constantly.

    Deep breath…

    Deep breath…

    We can get through this.

  • Who’s to Blame For the 2020 Election?

    This seems to be the big question that is going around liberal and Democrat circles; whose fault is it that they didn’t win more? Democrats won the White house, but didn’t take any State legislatures, lost seats in the House, and at best will have 50 seats in the Senate. The Blue Wave never showed up, and 70 million people voted for Trump. Someone has to be blamed for this! What Democrat fucked this up?

    Republicans are to blame, but not the way you think.

    Here’s the thing; Biden won by 5 million votes, and Biden also got enough votes in the swing states, just like Trump did four years ago, to win the Presidency. What that says to me is that very few minds were changed in the past four years, and those who did change their minds were Republicans. I would argue that those Republicans who voted for Biden, made a point of splitting their ticket to keep Biden in check.

    But doesn’t that reinforce the idea that Democrats failed to do a good job at selling their platform to Americans?

    No, because that platform wasn’t the reason people were voting. Democrats voted to remove Trump, and Republicans voted to keep him. That’s it. It doesn’t get anymore complicated than that.

    2020 was not an issue election, and it wasn’t a traditional change election. It was a referemdum on Trump.

    It wasn’t about BLM, or Defunding the Police, in the sense that those two issues are being pointed to as why there wasn’t a Blue Wave, but that’s all horse shit. BLM and Defund didn’t turn off Trump voters. That logic is like saying the racists and white supremacists were going to vote for Biden/Harris, but damn it, The Squad said “defund the police,” and now all those Trump voters went back to Trump?!?! Like I said, it’s a horse shit argument. Trump voters were always going to vote for Trump, no matter what.

    Remember the 5th Avenue comment? Trump killed 250,000+ people, and he still got 70 million votes. They weren’t voting out of a logical selfinetrest.

    Where Democrats get it wrong is that they keep bringing logic to the emotion fight, and that’s why they don’t do better.