The coyotes were howling in the distance, and not just a little, but a lot.

I don't know if a person can pick up moods or attitudes by reading a blog.  I.e., I don't know if you can read a blog and detect these things.

I also frankly think that people are generally bad at picking up such things anyway, or if they are, at a certain point, they disregard them if they don't fit their own world view in regard to the subject.  I.e., once a person has reached a certain point in life, people's views regarding that person are fixed, and at a societal level.  

We see examples of that all the time.  On rare occasion, and it is rare as it takes courage, somebody will make a radical shift in their lives.  A lawyer leaves his practice to become a priest.  A doctor leaves his to become a farmer.  An accountant becomes an automechanic.  Whatever.  When these things happen there's always a little bit of shock to those around, and a mild suggestion of, well, he must be crazy.

So too is the view when somebody has a personal shift.  People depend on certain other people to occupy certain roles, indeed they depend on them to such an extent that they don't allow those people to bend in them. They have to break, actually, before anything is noticed.  Somebody will be worked to death because heavy work was the role they had, and other people depended upon them to work.  After a tragic demise occurs, people will express shock and surprise, but I wonder how shocked they really are.  Maybe they noticed and just let it happen, as it was to their own benefit.  Many other examples could be provided.

I'm noting all of this for an assortment of reasons.  

Recently I've been feeling like the Lone Ranger on some things and it's a role that I'm not really comfortable with.  I'm not going to go into detail on it, and it's not a sudden shift in anything.  My world outlook is largely the same it is when I was five, which puts me out of sync with almost the entire world in some ways.  

One of the ways is that I've become disgusted with the behavior of a society in a lot of ways.  I deal with problems professionally and in recent years I've come to be a person whom people confer their personal problems to as well.  On a lot of days I start working on dire problems early, handle those problems all day long, and then come home to an entire set of problems.  I've had enough of problems in a lot of ways.  It doesn't matter, however, the problems keep coming.

Indeed, in recent weeks the problems have expanded exponentially.  There's no refuge from them at all.  I'm not going into detail on any of them, but I've literally had days when I've come home and thought that I just want to crawl into the basement, turn on anything on television, and forget the problems.  Instead, my long-suffering spouse will find me, and suddenly I'm given a complete new set of problems.  I've found myself saying "I can't take one more problem" more than once.  It doesn't matter, I'll get them.

The problems that I dislike the most involve fighting.  Not in the physical sense, but in the argumentative sense.  This operates as an enormous self-inflicted irony in my case, as my occupation involves a constant application of the "adversarial process".

Indeed, that's part of the existential problem that I find myself faced with right now.  Maybe its just my mood, which if so is now a mood running for weeks and weeks, but my belief in the adversarial process is broken.  Recent events have taught me that the oft cited claims by lawyers that the process is the best one for sorting out disputes is largely propaganda, and largely propaganda designed to allow them to tolerate being mercenaries.  Added to that, I'm not at the point where I feel the often cited plaintiff's lawyers' claims about representing the rights of the downtrodden are completely false.  I find very little empathy among that group of people, as some recent personal events have demonstrated to me in a shocking way.  A colleague recently said to me, believing the propaganda, that "to be a plaintiff's lawyer you have to have empathy".  That's crap.   They may actually be better off without it.

Indeed, I think they are.  A lack of empathy allows themselves to approach their craft without concern over the impact, to anyone.  And indeed, I've come to the conclusion that this is probably a personality trait best suited for the law, which is part of the problem with the law.  Apathy is the supposed opposite of empathy, and I don't know that really fits it, but in some ways perhaps it does.  I recently experienced a situation in which a plaintiff's lawyer demonstrated a shocking lack of empathy for a genuine ongoing crisis.  In thinking of it, I think this is common to a fault. There are exceptions, but they're rare, I fear.

Blessed are the peacemakers, we're informed by the Beatitudes, but we're not told that there's any peace for them in this life.  Not at all.  Being a peacemaker isn't peaceful, it's tiresome.  It also, ironically, means that the peacemaker is constantly drowning in strife, but not of his own making.

It's a role that's easy to escape.  Thinking on it myself, I had a lawyer act as a mediator in a case some time back who retired from it.  I've twice asked if he'd come out of retirement to handle a mediation in matters he'd be good at.  In no uncertain terms, he's said no way whatsoever.

That example is a good one.  He made a complete break.  He retired and won't be drawn out of retirement. Absolutely not  It was hard for me to grasp at the time, but it isn't now.  He must have had enough of the fighting.  

Added to this is a couple of other things.  One is already hinted at.  I've occupied a certain role in life, personally and professionally, for a very long time.  I've been feeling uneasy about some things existentially for some time, but I tend to keep my own thoughts to myself, as introverted peacemakers do.  That means that by the time you express them, you are unlikely to be listened to until the expressions are too blunt to ignore.  I'm not really even at that level yet, although in some quarters I'm starting to be.

If you are at that level, there's a really strong trend for you to be disregarded.  People generally have the "it'll go away" type of reaction, or "we depend upon you. . . " reaction.  In the latter, it's often very true, but it also has the "your own concerns be damned, we need you to do this.", even from people who are close to you.  The chances of somebody saying "oh gee, we get it your concerns, let me lift this load from you and put it down" are, quite frankly, nonexistent later in life, or at least it seems that way to me.

As part of this, and a major part, you aren't allowed to make such statements regarding a house you built yourself. That's definitely part of it.

People fall into roles, or are even forced into them, more in life than we might suppose and this is particularly true for people who have values.  People lose the ability to avoid working, which is a blunt way to put it, at some point in their early adulthood. At some point beyond that, their ability to avoid serious work largely end as well.  Some do, but many do not.  From their, people's roles in life become more and more determined societally rather than on their own.  Look around at the people you meet today and you'll find that the highly ambitious are probably occupying all their roles as they desired to achieve them, but they made a lot of sacrifices in order to get there.  Most people don't and are shoved into the roles they occupy.

Nonetheless, we all occupy roles at least partially of our own making.  And the longer you are in those roles, for whatever reason, the harder it is to escape them.  That makes us prisoners of cells we built ourselves, and at some point we lose the keys to them.

Which I guess answers a question I've had from time to time, which is why won't God aid me in escaping them.  I don't want to escape anything I’m morally bound to, my family or those I love, but certain other problems.  It's very hard for me to grasp why I have certain very strong impulses in this area, but my efforts are basically put down.  I'm not allowed any easy escape.  Why is this?'

My long-suffering spouse would answer to this, and has, that perhaps you need to be where you are for some reason only God knows.  Maybe that is it.  We're not put here on Earth for a decade's long vacation, but for other reasons.

Well, maybe, but I'm tired of it.  I saw a comment by another devout Catholic the other day which in jest stated something like "God can quit testing me any time now".  I feel that way seriously.  If I'm here as my roles serve some other purpose, selfish though it is, I'd like that purpose to be picked up by somebody else now.

The "check engine light" went out on the Dodge yesterday morning.  I have to drive to Denver, which I hate, today.  The shop didn't have time to take it in to fix it, but they did have time to read the code.  The turbocharger is going out.  When it goes, and it will, it'll cost at least $3,000 to fix.

One more thing.

Last night, I went to bed early.  I was tired anyhow, and frankly after a horrific day I came home and had a glass of Irish Whiskey.  Having a glass of whiskey after a bad day is a bad idea, but I did it anyhow.  One more thing.

I went to bed, as noted, early.  At 9:00 the phone went off.  I leave my phone on at night in case one of the kids call.  It was a client.  I didn't answer the phone.  One more thing.

At 11:00 the dog started barking.  He never barks.  I heard it in my sleep first, but then it woke me up.  Droggy, I woke my long-suffering spouse up, and she took the dog out back. We thought he needed to go out for obvious reasons.  While she was doing that I could smell the smell of a distant forest fire in a year that's been full of them. One more thing.  The fires are due, as if anyone could now ignore it, to a decades long refusal on Western societies part to address an obviously arriving climate crisis.  One more thing.  I suggested she close the windows, even thought it was hot, and turn on the air conditioner, even though I don't like it.  She did.

That came about after we brought the dog back down to go to bed. He kept making muffled barks.  Then I could hear it. 

The coyotes were howling in the distance, and not just a little, but a lot.

They were speaking to the dog.  And to me.