For those amongst us who are old enough to remember driving “three on a tree” vehicles, shifting gears was often quite a learning experience. I must say I ground out my share of hamburger meat in those days.

But finally, I was able to manage the proper orchestration of the clutch pedal and doing an up over up motion, then clutch and straight down with the gear shift.

Yeah, those were the days of the three-speed.

Shifting gears. One, two three. Easy, once you got the sequence down and became better practiced at downshifting and upshifting.

Pretty d*mned easy, huh?

Why can’t it be that easy to shift my emotional state? I think a lot of us are currently where I am today. A lot of us are struggling with our creative process at the moment.

It’s no wonder. It’s difficult to write about the wonders of the world around us when the world is, at the moment, trying to kill us.

I certainly am struggling and for several different reasons, all valid and all seeming to be happening at once.

Problems at my JOB, work imposed solitary confinement, fear of contracting a virus which could put an end to me; watching the economy start to take a nosedive, reading all the political lies being smeared atop a steaming sh*tpile of more lies.

It’s really tough to be happy and creative with all this sh*t going on. Don’t get me wrong, though, folks. Sometimes as a writer, we have to dig down deep, way down in the souls of some of our memories. A lot of times, we have display things about ourselves, we’re really uncomfortable sharing with others.

We have to do battle with ourselves in some really dark places.

I’ve done it, and it’s been some of the most challenging writing I ever did. But the exciting thing about it was I was always happy in a satisfied, I finally got that off my chest, kind of way.

What I’m talking about today is a lack of buoyancy in my heart. I’m not necessarily dead inside, but I ain’t all that happy either. Let’s put this another way.

For the last several weeks I’ve been closer to tears every day than smiles.

There’s a whole lot of sh*t going on just outside the doors of my house, and just like you, I’m beginning to feel the pressure, more and more. This morning a buddy of mine sent me a text which unknowingly nudged me closer to the crying mark…again.

Does anyone know when we find out which Hunger Games district we are in? It’s coming. Shooters, are you ready?

Has it come to this already? Is pandemic panic simply mass hysteria, or is it a reality steeped in events happening right now? Are we talking about the real apocalypse? Am I going to be forced to defend my right as a Human to simply live or die in peace?

Look, I try to let the hysteria and fear just pass though our house without stopping to shoot the sh*t for a while. But everywhere we turn, we’re faced with a harsh and very brand new reality. A reality of change that may ultimately alter the way many of us do business, the way many of us live.

And what we all fear is that when and if this threat finally simmers down in its wake, it will more than likely force us to adopt a brand new lifestyle, a completely different way of living.

The potential for starting over and relearning how to survive again, seems terribly real at the moment.

So, it’s d*mned hard to put a smile on my face when my heart feels like a huge lead weight at the bottom of a fishing line. Each day it aches a little more. It’s been hurting for quite some time now.

I want it to stop, but I know for a while, maybe for a long while, this is how I’m, how many of us are going to feel.

I want to feel happy again, but shifting these emotional gears of mine is a lot trickier than managing three on the tree. H*ll, I haven’t even managed to find the clutch yet.

Maybe one of these days I will. Perhaps I’ll learn how to shift my emotional gears when I get like this and drive myself out from under this disastrous cloud of misery. But for now, and I mean this in every literal sense, the weight of the world is upon us.

Now we just need to band together and learn how to survive. You clutch, and I’ll shift, or you can shift, and I’ll clutch.

It doesn’t really matter as long as we find a way to drive away from this mess.

Peace And Love

Paul Barnett

Thanks So Much For Reading

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

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