Climbing back in

It’s been three weeks since I wrote here. My health, both mental and physical, hasn’t been great. I’m writing now because I fear if I don’t write soon, I’ll give up on this and that will only make me feel worse.

I’m trying to figure out what’s gone wrong with me. Lack of sunshine? Lack of baseball? Lack of gumption?

To keep my brain going, which is the same as if I said “to keep breathing,” I read voraciously. Yesterday I picked up my copy of Jennifer Hecht’s Doubt: A History. It has 513 pages of well-written prose on a subject dear to both my heart and mind. I only read a bit at a time because I’m happily sidetracked by her references to primary sources of free thought and skepticism. I go searching for these before reading the next chapter. Then I add the titles to my other blog, The Free Thought Bibliography. If I can find an online full-text source and can justify the time (not easy), I go ahead and read them.

I have been in awe of this author and her accomplishment. Her research opens up new worlds for me, new thinkers, new ideas. Her book is a vast work, which she described in the acknowledgments merely as a “huge project.” It can’t have taken her 20 years to write because her back cover photo shows a woman I would consider young. An internet search tells me she is now in her late 40s but the book was published almost ten years ago. How did she do it?

Well, part of the answer is that she works as an academic, meaning she gets paid to teach and write about stuff. But she also has two children and a husband.

But, lo, what is this I see? She started an atheist blog two years ago and then didn’t keep up with it. Hurrah! The woman is human, after all. Why does that make me feel better? Can’t deny it does.

Was her subject any more vast than mine? Probably not, and her primary sources a lot less obscure than many of mine. She didn’t start her family until after Doubt was published. I’ve been parenting all through the last 20 years. She inhabits academia where her efforts are supported, acknowledged and rewarded. I don’t got none of that stuff.

Heck, maybe I’m not doing so bad after all.