Just read the funniest thing on Yahoo News: “Denial May Be the Key to a Happy Marriage.” I kid you not. Satisfaction in any relationship it says, “is based on perception rather than actual fact, and therein lies the rub of not only love, but also of living with someone on intimate terms.”
If you just think your mate is the greatest, then he or she is! Explains a lot about some relationships and you know the ones I’m talking about! The woman who supports a husband who (like me) doesn’t have a job, or the opposite, the man who is devoted to a wife that treats him like a servant.
When Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett everyone shook their heads; such a beauty with him??!!?? It didn’t last of course, but at least for a while Roberts thought Lovett was the greatest guy on Earth. Actually, he might be too.
Denial though is a great escape mechanism! Who can get through a day without a little denial by way of rationalization? Those who deny it are in denial about denial.
This creed has languished for two days now, unfinished and without inspiration, denied the courtesy of completion and closure. There just hasn’t been that spark to write, or the discipline to sit and write regardless of the existence of the spark or not. Ernest Hemingway famously sat down to write for eight hours every day even if nothing was produced. The point being: the only way out of writers block is to write.
It’s hard to believe how long it took to write the previous paragraph; a pause after every phrase, a lengthier pause after every sentence and then a tweak of the sentence.
In college there was often that idea that taking English as a major was the easier route than engineering, which required math and science classes. Looking back, and inspecting the writing of many engineers, saddled with the realities of trying to write for a living, engineering wasn’t the more difficult path, it just had the appearance of difficulty and perception is just the seed of denial.
For the past 17 years I’ve been in denial about being a writer. In 1992 I left the staff of a news organization and haven’t had a writing or editorial position since, although twice in those 17 years I worked for companies that employed my skills with the written word.
Publishing is a dying vocation, at least in the hard copy, newspaper and magazine industries. Anything you can get on paper in the mail can be had electronically over the Internet. Newspapers are folding left and right and magazines are losing subscribers who find it much easier and cheaper to get the same content online. Everyday I get a copy of the San Diego Union-Tribune in my e-mail. Funnier still, I don’t bother to read the comics online and I haven’t done a New York Times crossword puzzle in years.
My friend John gets the paper delivered every day and he does every puzzle they offer. I just checked my online version and before I could find either the comics or puzzles, I was reading the news, including a news item on buying the right bra. I have a little more sympathy for women now.
Even if I had found the puzzles, how do you do them on a computer? Actually, we don’t get them in the online version. Nor do we get the comics. So, for puzzle-players and comics readers—at least those of us in San Diego — the newspaper itself is the only way to scratch those itches.
And now, 600 words (and counting) into this, I’m still no closer to a subject, other than denial can be a good quality to ensure a happy marriage and paper news and magazines are undeniably on their way out the door. The upside to that being it will possibly save millions of trees and there will be less paper in landfills.
News is still readily available of course. Every time I open Yahoo for my e-mail there are links to news stories to divert my attention and I read some of them every day. Then I open the e-mail from the San Diego Union-Tribune and read more.
Still, the idea of sitting in a comfortable chair with the paper open to the comics sounds so appealing. I’ve drifted into plenty of naps from just such a position. Newspapers have been a part of my life since childhood, even before I had paper routes delivering both the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal, which have now been merged into one morning newspaper.
As “paperboys,” we used to have our conceit about which was the more desirable route. After lugging the Sunday Journal, it became clear the six day-per-week Sentinel was far more desirable. We got up in the wee hours, got it delivered before most people were up and about (except for the fire station) and after we delivered our papers we were free to have fun with little chance of getting caught. My older brother Rick had a Sentinel route before me and he taught me a lot.
Now a days newspapers are delivered by adults or sold on corners and islands in the streets by adults. It’s no longer an occupation for kids. There’s too much danger for a 13-year old to be out alone at 4:30 a.m.
Times have changed. My life has changed — just in the past four weeks! It’s been 30 days since my heart surgery and it can honestly be said I’m much better physically than I was 31 days ago.
But some things never change, like trying to find inspiration in denial. So I’m giving up and ending this here. There’s no denying I have nothing to say.
TheForkesReport