I’d have been a helluva blogger at twenty.
I tried to take in everything at that age—every last news thing, that is—and I had an opinion about everything, which I was (surprise!) not shy about expressing.
It helped that I had a weekly column with The Daily Cardinal, so I could share my views about, oh, everything, with the world.
Hot schnocolate. Platoon and ‘being there’. Sex ed. Feminism. Class.
I once started started a column with ‘Enough fucking around.’ (It was about the hostages held in Iran. I was wrong.)
Then there was the column I published about [the lack of] tolerance on the Madison campus—the day of an interview with campus officials for a scholarship. (I was asked about the column; I got the scholarship.)
I loved being in the newsroom, that sense of something always going on; I remember standing over the AP machine watching news unspool on the long roll of paper, and thinking, ‘Man, how many other people know this right now?’ And we got to tell them.
Opinions to burn, baby, I had ’em.
Still do; never lost ’em. In fact, at one lunch with a guest to a bioethics center, I introduced myself by stating ‘I have lunch and opinions.’
But I am tired. The news felt new, back then; now, it’s more of the same. There’s a kind of wisdom in that, I guess, or at least knowledge, of the sort that can only be gained with time and experience, but the frisson is missing.
That’s okay. Just as I no longer need to get roaring drunk to have a good time, and rather enjoy pulling the ‘old, old lady’ card on my students, I don’t need bubbles in my brain at the mere sight of updated headlines.
But, oh, what I could have, would have, written, back in the day, how I would have been energized rather than enervated by the constant flow of information, and how I would not have even thought to have paused before adding my own bits to that flow.
It would have been fun. I like this gig, now, this greater reflection and slow pace, but, still.
It would have been fun.
(h/t EmilyLHauser)
AbsurdBeats 
Thank you for your lovely comment at my place, and I’m so touched that reading that had anything to do with you writing this — so much of what you say here feels so familiar to me. How I would have been energized rather than enervated by the constant flow of information — how I would have been and was — how I wanted shit to happen, so I could cover it already! Now, I rather wish the shit would slow down a bit. I’d like to lie in the grass and look up at the summer sky for awhile.
Everything seems new when you’re younger. As you grow, you start to see the long view of history, and how that platitude about history repeating itself turns out to be, in fact, completely true.
All of which makes me admire those who manage not to become jaded just that much more…