The Interim, 2001–2020
Not long after this shellacking, I learned I was going to become a father. I immediately began picking up extra hours, adding a couple of freelance clients, and soon I was working 50-60 hours per week. And then my daughter was born.
Pretty much all thought of things going on outside of our small world went by the wayside. It wasn’t intentional, I just didn’t have the bandwidth. Life had firmly taken control of my life.
Gonna hit the fastforward button here (see the Appendix for more info), I:
changed jobs
started and operated and sold two businesses
became a high school football coach
became Director of Marketing at the same school
started another business
left DoM position in June of 2017
Aaaaand, play:
So, events continued to occur all around me for 17 years. The Afghanistan/Iraq wars, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, the election of President Obama, and on, and on, none of it compelled me to put pen to paper.
Honestly, most of it barely broke through to even be recognized, so deep contemplation and opinion forming was just out.
Over this long time period, I developed a theory of national politics that landed on me believing that it really didn’t matter who was president. That the people of the US would keep the country on the tracks, regardless of the imbecile planting his/her ass behind the Resolute Desk. I felt there were way many political and institutional obstacles and firewalls for any president to get too much accomplished, good or bad, by himself.
Just like the previous decade and a half, I didn’t pay attention in 2016, either. I didn’t know much about Donald Trump, just that I was not a fan. He made me feel bad for Rosie O’Donnell once, and that was just unforgivable.
I heard some of the things he was saying in his campaign, and they just seemed so ludicrous, and every respectable Republican was shouting from the rooftops about what a horrible guy Trump was, even after he became the nominee. So I thought, even if he’s elected, he won’t be able to actually do any of the crazy things he was screaming about. So again, I checked out.
