I guess I needed longer than a one week break. But I’m back now, and I think I’ve made some decisions.

I don’t want to give up on this blog. I don’t want it to just fade away, to be something I did for a while and then abandoned when it got too hard, or I got bored with it.

That said, posting daily isn’t working for me anymore. It is too stressful, too much pressure on myself. The point of this blog was to have fun writing, and daily posts just make me dread sitting down to write.

So, I am going to try and keep this blog going, but only post once a week. For now. If that goes well, I might bump it up to three times a week – who knows, maybe I’ll eventually make it back to once a day.

Until next time,
The Narrator

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

Today marks the 200^th consecutive day I’ve posted on this blog. Some pieces I’ve loved, some were dashed off in minutes, and some need a lot more work. But that’s okay, because I started this project as a 30 day challenge, to see if I could do it, if I could be inspired and find that spark in writing again.

Clearly, I blew past the 30 day mark, but it wasn’t without its struggles. I started this blog on January 7^th, and wrote through the presidential impeachment trial later that month. In March, COVID-19 hit the United States hard, and I entered self-imposed lockdown. Then, a few months later on May 25^th, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, and the nation irrupted in protests, with violent police responses that carry on even today (in stark contrast to the protests against public health mandates only a few weeks before).

That said, I picked a hell of a time to try this experiment. The world has changed so much since I’ve started posting, and some of those changes are reflected in my work.

But along with those changes has come a lot of burnout. I am exhausted, the collective energy of the world dragging me down with it. This blog, which started as a fun experiment, something I was excited to do and felt good about completing, now brings me greater stress and anxiety.

For that reason, I am going to give myself a break – I am going to stop posting for the rest of July, and re-evaluate this project. I hope to come back after this week or so break reinvigorated, but that is a hope, not a promise.

I might be rearing to go, ready to keep up my rate of a post a day. I might tone it back, and pick a three day schedule. Or I might decide that this blog isn’t helpful to me anymore, and stop altogether. But I am going to come back on August 1^st, with some kind of decision made.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, thank you so much for reading. If you just found it, great timing.

Until the 1^st,
The Narrator

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

“Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day. Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right, and still you feel like you failed. Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place?…

Like I said, sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day…

Sometimes, the day just…

…ends.”

-Aaron Hotchner, played by Thomas Gibson in Criminal Minds, season five, episode eight, “Outfoxed.”

1. You are exhausted all the freaking time.

You constantly feel tired, drained, lacking energy. You have to deal with your own emotions every day, plus the emotions of the people you live with, your neighbors, coworkers, people you pass on the street, people on the Internet, people who are prominent public figures, everyone. And all that energy, all that emotion, just sucks any drive or momentum you might have had right out of you.

2. You know things about people.

And never the people you want to know about. You might not be able to read your crush, or your boss, or your friend, but that guy on the bus? That kid from class? The politician on TV? You can figure out their whole life story, just from watching them, feeling their energy, seeing how they react to the world around them. Which leads to…

She closed her eyes, teeth clenched together, her breathing shallow. She needed to calm down, to push the writhing energy inside her down, down, down, until it couldn’t hurt anyone else. She needed to be calm, cool, a fixed point. Not the storm.

She felt her heart thudding in her chest, much too quickly. She felt a buzzing in her head, like it was going to fly away from her body, from the feelings clogging her chest. That tight feeling gripping her heart, her lungs, crawling up her throat and pressing against her lips.

She would not break. She would not unleash her energy into an already overflowing world. She took a deep breath, then another. Breath first. She ignored the voice in her mind telling her to throw, break, scream into the world until it heard her. There was no use; she couldn’t change the world, even if her throat was raw from yelling and her muscles weak from breaking.

She squashed her anger, her pain, her grief, her frustration, her joy, her love, her happiness. She would be numb. She would be still. She would not feel. That is how she would survive.

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

Jesse Hibblestump: Welcome back, Stumpers, to another celebrity interview here on The Stump podcast. As always, I’m your host, Jesse Hibblestump, and be sure to check out our YouTube channel, Twitter, Insta, TikTok and if you’re still on Facebook, well, we are too! If you love what we’re up to here at The Stump, head over to our Patreon and help support our awesome projects! I am here today with a very special guest, and I know you’ve all been waiting to hear what this person has to say. I’ll be asking the hard-hitting questions, as well as some that you, our dear listeners, submitted through Instagram. Without further ado, please welcome Lockie Winslow!

(applause)

Lockie Winslow: Uh, hi.

In, and out…

In, and out…

In…

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

In the blessed year of 2016, the Savior came. It was clear that he was the Savior because he was chosen in the year 2016.

2+0+1+6 equals 9, and 9 is 3×3, and 3 is the Holy Trinity.

With such an obvious sign, the world shifted back to the way it had been, and the way it was supposed to be.

The Savior proclaimed that there would be a free, beautiful wall, and so it was. Kind of. It’s still being worked on, and wasn’t quite free.

And after the faithful rallied for their right to exist, after they stood their ground and proclaimed that they would not be replaced, the Savior proclaimed that there were good people on both sides. Even though only one side brandished guns, and only one side committed manslaughter.

The Savior reached out to others for aid in his mission. If they had information about his rivals, well, he probably should listen to it, right? And if he expected some help in return for his benevolence, well, that was his prerogative, right?

There are so many examples of the Savior’s great works, but that means there are too many to list here. He’s great, that’s all you need to know.

The angry losers tried to usurp the Savior, but he held fast to his position. Sure, he might have done some things that weren’t great, but they weren’t against the rules, and he had learned better. Plus, it was so boring to watch them talk in circles, not saying anything new.

And then, the Savior’s true enemy revealed itself. An invisible foe from across the world crept its way into the country, infecting losers and faithful alike. The Savior promised it would go away with the warmer weather. The Savior proclaimed that the people were on their own, and that he had the absolute power to fix it.

He urged his followers to try the magical cure with the magical name – what did they have to lose? And he put forth the idea that injecting light and bleach into their bodies would save them from the invisible enemy.

Wait, what? That can’t be right. Savior, wait, where are you going?!

What do you mean, sarcasm?

© The Lightning Tower, 2020

“Yeah, ‘cuz it’s warmer in April,” she snorted, watching the snow fall outside her window for the third day in a row. “Not that that would have fixed anything, anyway.” She leaned back in her chair, head in hands. Would the idiocy ever end?

Screenshot from HuffPost, 4/15/2020

© The Lightning Tower, 2020