OddballGreg - State Of The Not So Nation Affairs

I tried looking for a picture of baboons but this was the best I could find. Then I found out that the plural for baboons is not a congress and felt like a twit. I do believe that is Poe's Law at its finest.

Goodness me, the first blog post in over a week? Where has the time gone? What happened? And why are so many people making jokes about the government. Turns out a lot has been happening recently. Lets talk about that.

Those of you who have been long time readers of this blog have probably noticed things change over the 7 months that it's been active. Everything from 2 rebrandings, to significant changes in content, and the most recent spat of... nothing. All things considered, last week was the first time in 7 months that this blog has not seen a single update or post uploaded. No ridiculous commentary or introspective thought whatsoever. (Goodness me.)

So what does this mean? Is little Jimmy stuck in a well? Does the Cataclysm approach? Or has TCSA run out of steam? While I've never met Jimmy and the Cataclysm can't be ruled out, what I can say is that TCSA has most certainly NOT run out of steam. Mostly. Sort of. It's about as complicated as most people's Facebook relationship settings. (Married to the girl you met last week? REALLY?)

That said, things have changed, as they tend to do in life. For the better? While nobody can say for sure, I can say that as the sum of my experiences, that I have grown stronger for what I've gone through of late. (For those of you counting, that's 2 references to previous blog posts so far. Brownie points for knowing them.)

Jokes aside, some serious business has occurred since the new year began, and some occurrences of the old year still had consequences to play out, which have both directly and indirectly influenced the blog as a result. First and foremost notably is the fact that I have a job now. Or... multiple jobs. It's complicated (again). As one of the critical thinking co-founders of the IT start-up GITR based here in South Africa, my job is to be whatever the company needs me to be, which has ranged from the designing of online adverts, the management of social media, the design of websites and the researching of consumer laws. There's also some data capture, human resource management and various other clerical activities in there for good measure. Fantastic.

The downside to this fascinating new development is the arrival of the interesting conundrums of time, energy and creativity. The blog kind've doesn't pay, the new company kind've does, and those aforementioned resources are a finite daily resource better suited to filling my pockets. I love blogging and entertaining, but if it doesn't pay the bills, it becomes hard to blog with no internet or electricity. (Not that South Africa has been properly lit up too well of late. Google it.)

Matters of wealth aside, my blogging endeavors were not aided by a near soul crushing emotional breakdown I suffered after realizing some flaws in my own personality. (There's those good old deep discussions you all know and love.) While I would prefer not to go into details, the short-long version is that the end of my first relationship which you may remember my references to in the latter half of 2014 left me emotionally distraught. After spending the last of 2014 simply recovering enough to function as a happy individual once more, I eventually realized that I was pinning far too much of my happiness on the actions of other people. I would become infatuated with people I had hardly spoken to, and develop unrealistic expectations which always ended in disaster. Combine this with my nice-guy attitude being taken as a "I actually want something from you." attitude did not help this epiphany.

Suffice to say, as a person who bases part of their personality on making people happy, realizing that people don't trust your sincerity is a dangerous blow, one which may have been difficult to recover from were it not for the support of my friends, who I thank greatly for the many nights spent listening to depressed griping as I picked the pieces up and in the time honored Japanese tradition of Kintsukoroi, rebuilt the vessel with gold, accepting that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. (That's OddballGreg dialect for "while it was hard, I think I'm a better person for it.")

These two things made blogging... well, hard. A lack of enthusiasm or motivation can make doing even the things you have passion for a chore. Thankfully that episode is mostly behind me now. That said, JovialJman has his own reasons for not having been blogging. I can't speak for him though. Which brings us finally to the present. What is actually happening with the blog?

Well, all kinds of things I hope. Like anything I do, I'm unable to maintain simplicity, and everything has a reason for itself and each other. The easiest way I can explain it is that the blog was the unexpected result of an idea JovialJman and myself had long ago as we sought to start a YouTube channel. (I may have mentioned this in the past. Several times.) TCSA was born from this idea, and a blog never featured in the original scheme, but instead became part of the plan to gain viewership before our eventual debut on the grainy video cameras of the inexperienced. However, we don't have cameras or anything, so we're working towards that with GITR, which will then have the benefit of being advertised for being the TCSA channel sponsor. It kinda all works hand in hand in a weird way. Still, that's the status of TCSA in a nutshell. Until then however, rest assured, I shall be doing my best to kick both mine and JovialJman's hiney into gear to establish at least a basis of at least 2 posts a week (one each), despite our busy schedules.

Speaking of schedules, here I am with limited time, writing a blog post at 11PM at night, going out in the early morning tomorrow despite having had a long day today, and I decide it's a good idea to write politically oriented jokes about things I shouldn't talk about or something silly like that. Good thing there's a part of my brain that understands that my chirp with the header image above was probably bad enough and I should leave it at that, which leaves me in a state of being the metaphorical owner of a shirt which reads "I spent 2 hours writing witty satirical commentary about recent political events and all I got was censored. Also this lovely T-shirt."

Could be worse I suppose. Imagine 3 hours. Oh lordy lord... I need sleep.

In any case, I hope that you have appreciated this rather informative, and heartfelt post which may be the longest I've written yet. If so, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback as it helps us know that you like what we're doing. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and in the world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon. (Hopefully.)

Keep well my friends.