Mass Dandelion Break

Time for a rant, folks.

Every morning when I wake up - at the ungodly hour of 4am, no less - the first thing I grab (other than the cat, to get her butt away from my face) is the TV remote.  I blindly turn on the TV to NBC and lie there in a half-zonked stupor, slowly absorbing the news of the morn.

And it is always shit. Negative, nasty shit.  Seriously, gray clouds everywhere.  Everyone hates everyone, someone else got shot, stabbed, hit by a car, snake-bit, punched in the face, kidnapped.  The camera is always zoomed in on fake, orange-tinted politicians with wild-ass hair and huge, phony "Hey, GOOD TO SEE YA" slimy car-salesman smiles.

I'm sick of nitpicking politicians, negative news, useless killings, forest fires, hit-and-run accidents, the whole dog-eat-dog world.  After 30 seconds of "news," I wake up pretty quick, literally and figuratively, and I change the channel to "I Love Lucy," or a movie on HBO.  I might not be up to snuff on my News Of The World, but I'd rather watch Jon Snow kill a bunch of White Walkers than put up with the bullshit happening out there.

And that, dear people, is why I write.  I write to escape the Hillarys and Trumps and kale-chewing, Bible-thumping uber-fanatics of our real world, and create my own.  Because at least there, I have control of the situation.  I can manipulate everything to go my way, move the arms and legs of our heroines like Gumby and Pokey bendy figures, bang out my own Happily Ever After while explosions and rioting and #AllLivesMatter continue unnoticed on the boob tube behind me.

Everyone needs their own Silent Lucidity, the ability to bend your dreams to your whim, or a place to go when the world just gets to be too much.  Writing is my dandelion patch.  (Thank you, Berke Breathed, creator of the incredible "Bloom County," for this analogy.)  So when life gives you lemons, pitch those bitches at the TV and head out with Opus the Penguin for your dandelion break.  Don't forget your tea and a good novel. -- Rebecca