About My Voice

On Election Night in November of 2016, I lost my voice. I lost it in two ways. The first way was that, as a Cali voter, I felt disenfranchised. Because of the antiquated Electoral College system, my vote counted for a fraction of the value of the vote of a heaping hayride of inbred good ole boys in Wyoming and Kentucky who put my future and the future of my children and grandchildren in jeopardy with their Paleolithic misperceptions of reality. The election left me devastated. When Michael Moore excoriated us stricken liberals for wallowing in “the seventeen stages of grief” over Hillary losing her chance at the White House, he spoke to me. That was me. He was telling us to get over it, to pick ourselves up and go out and kick some shit. He helped me laugh at myself. Because I was grieving. I’m still grieving. But that’s not a good enough excuse. I have moved forward and found ways to resist, to survive, to hope, and to laugh. I have reclaimed my sense of joy.

Moore’s words were not the main reason I managed to pull myself out of my post-election funk. The biggest thing that set me on the road to recovery was having my children come home over the holidays. They remain so optimistic, so positive, and so funny, that I feel that I can do no less. The biggest reason why I stopped blogging after the election was that I could not find the humor in things. My children swiftly found the humor and they helped me begin to laugh again. Since their visit, with a renewed effort, I have searched for, and found, more humor than I thought possible in these bleak times.

I have had a lot of unexpected laughs. The reenactment of the Bowling Green Massacre at Mar-a-Lago. Waking Frederick Douglass and Luciano Pavarotti from the dead to waterboard them into signing an affidavit stating that they are the fake-president’s BFFs. The ICE hotline the fake-president set up for people to call in and report suspected criminal activity by “illegal aliens,” which has been jammed nonstop by gleeful liberals calling to report questionable activity by space aliens (true fact, not alternative, call 1-855-48-VOICE to report Martian activity). And how about Hasan Minhaj? Don’t you just love him for his words at the White House Correspondents Dinner? If you have not read his jokes yet, go do it. He’s brilliant. Here's the link.

So even though I still feel disenfranchised, even though I continue to grieve, even though I fear that the fake-president will pause long enough from golfing to cause a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, I have found a new voice (with more than a touch of humor in it) as an active member of the Resistance.

The other way that I lost my voice had to do with a personal “dark night of the soul.” In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t published a book in five years. This is not for lack of trying. I have several books on the shelf that don’t seem to interest any publishers. They don’t interest any literary agents. They don’t even interest my cats, who would rather sleep or play with catnip toys. I completed yet another novel in October, and it has joined the tribe of Amy’s unpublished manuscripts. I feel like the world has told me to shut up. And why not? My voice is of little significance in the larger scheme of things. I lost my voice because I wondered why I bother to write. I feel unheard, unread, and simply foolish to think that my words make any difference. So I quit writing. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I liked being off the hook. I still do. I feel relieved to accept that I, and anything I might deign to say, are not that important to anyone outside my tight little circle. All my life, I have put pressure on myself to produce, to write something that matters. So maybe I can’t do that. I still believe in the power of narrative to change lives, just not my narrative.

What motivated me to consider returning to my blog? It was you. Recently, in the space of a few days, a surprising number of people in my life asked me when I would start blogging again, or went out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed my blog and how much they miss it. I had no idea that so many people were reading me, that my words matter to them. To you. Thank you for encouraging me to begin again. Maybe I have inspired a smile or a chuckle or a sympathetic nod. Maybe I have, in fact, provided a little insight or lightened your load. It’s not much in the context of the infinite universe, but the infinite universe doesn’t have much bearing on our daily lives. The infinite universe is not very funny. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even infinite since physics is not my strong suit.

My strong suit is writing. I’d like to think I’m also not half bad at humor when the light strikes me in just the right way. So here I am again. I can’t say I will go back to writing every week. But you can find me here on my blog again sporadically, when I have something to say, when I’m feeling up to it, when something makes me laugh and I want to share. Here I am again, flinging my microscopic voice out into the vast reaches of space. It’s just a blip, but it’s my blip. Whoever you are out there, reading my blips, thanks for listening. 

Hasan Minhaj at WHCA Dinner 2017