Monday, July 29, 2013

Communication and Failure



     There has been a common theme in my blogs over the past month. This glum motif of loss is hardly subtle. Even last week when I tried to be positive I just ended up acknowledging everything that’s bringing me down. It may have been a healthy blog, but this ongoing theme is getting old. I’m tired of writing all boohoo about my truck, which still may or may not get fixed. And for our chickens, I found another one yesterday morning almost dead. She took all day to die. These good layers have a short lifespan. What’s going to happen will happen no matter how I feel about it.
     So while I won’t deny I’m still in a funk, I want to be done writing about it. I’m really not that bad off. I have a great job that I love and it provides everything I need. I don’t watch TV so I don’t look into an unrealistic world that might make mine look inadequate.
     I used to be quite the TV watcher. Not as much now. I remember the late night infomercials that would try to sell me things I never knew I needed. How can a 30-60 second film convince me that I need something I wasn’t aware of? Maybe they paint a picture of a sad life where someone else needs something.

     Now is an image like that going to be depressing or amusing? I don’t see how watching something like this could be depressing.

Maybe someone who is very empathetic would feel sorry for these poor people.
     I thought that the goal of the advertisers here was to make someone look and think that they needed a product. They would show an image that people might be able to relate to.

And the viewer would feel compelled to spend money so they would never have to experience that again.
     But what planet do these people live on?

     I’m not feeling sorry for these people. And wait a moment, I feel a little better about myself looking at these. I begin to think that I’m a little more capable of everyday tasks.
     Maybe when these clips of people failing at things are shown in context they make more sense. After all, these are the “before” pictures.

The after pictures might show cheerful and successful people with no troubles in their lives at all. Maybe these ads are very effective. I suppose they have to be in order to be on TV. Or maybe not. Maybe these are desperate attempts to communicate a message, but there is no real point and no clear statement is made. It’s little more than an anguished at pitiful attempt at something, searching, grappling, and ultimately failing.

So what am I trying to say? Just this, I’m tired of being gloomy and am making a desperate attempt to lighten things up. When I looked at these gif files they made me want to laugh. I didn’t laugh out loud. But I may have cracked a smile. I was just hoping to pass on a little light-hearted message this time instead of the miserable dirges I’ve been at lately.
In truth, I am working a lot on the memoir I’ve mentioned in previous posts. Little else is going on that I feel I can talk about. I wasn’t sure what to blog about and I’ve wanted to share this for awhile and so I did. I look back at some of my blog posts and am proud of them. Some I look back on and cringe. Some I even cringe as I hit PUBLISH.

This may be one. But it’s done and out there. It is done and there is no undoing.


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