And now the bafflement at having to have an opinion 200 times a week. - AS
How a propos that Andrew should mention that. I almost put up a whole post on that, during the Imus flap. All these people, running around, trying to say what is or isn't comedic and why. Whether some part of hip-hop is art or not. Most of it hit my ear like a cacophony. True, expressing opinions is an adult way of learning (at least up until it goes too far, becoming hopelessly self-righteous, as in 'that's my opinion, and I don't care if you have a better argument'). But, you can lose your stillness of mind if you try to have an opinion on everything, especially if "opinionating" makes you think yourself rakishly exciting, snazzy educated, off-hand erudite, worth-knowing or urbane (now you know why I find the non-funny parts of "Blogging-Heads" oppressive ... ooops, saying things like that is gonna cost me. It's also like the WWF for the hyper-educated, and I like the WWF in its way, so ... there's the 'balance' for you.) That's all I have to say about that. (*chuckle*) One excepts, of course, the case of a comforting blanket opinion for everything, as is the case for my dear friend, whose sobriquet is jokingly ... "opinion-for-everything".
Being an information hound for a living can be addictive and all consuming, perhaps in ways different than how other passions can become addictive (it's edgy). I'm not sure I have an addictive personality, but some of my worst/best stories are about extraordinary lengths gone to getting a problem wrestled to the ground (it ruined a lot of happy-hour napkins, once, with calculations ... *gasp*). I was lucky early in my "career" (*choke*) to have some exceptional managers, and one of them offered up the elucidating view that he was more worried if people didn't take their appointed vacations than if they did, which is so often the popular culture (time away must mean you don't love your job or the firm enough, right?). Burn-out is real, more so than rust-out in the information businesses, I think. Overtime, I've developed a rule-of-thumb about a "break" every six weeks and think of it like a soldier taking care of his feet, even in battle.
Journalism itself has its own well-known moral stresses. Ultimately, you are an observer, but that doesn't mean that you cannot become a superiorly informed observer. Watching agents-of-action fumble-stumble can only make anyone with a moral sense to want to reach out and move one of the chess pieces, to ameliorate. Bloggers may feel this even more acutely, because their slant is often to lead with ideas. It's a hard thing, in the throws of it, to draw a line. If you have a mental retreat handy, a sense of the Divine Comedy, it facilitates observing a political tragedy unfold, knowing that He's got the whole world in His hands.
Meanwhile, Andrew is lucky to have good friends to watch over his blog. I kinda like that Douthat-comma-Ross, so far, and I hope good things come to him. Still, he is not AS. AS has that "X" factor. Well, it's not really an "X" factor. I know what some of it is, but I really don't want to write an opinion on that!
