I'm back? Back on the Neil Oliver Channel anyway!
What I particularly like about this conversation is that, rather than ‘commentating’ or ‘opinionating’, it has us speaking as two guys shooting the breeze in a manner that is honest and unaffected.
Image: finstocker/Vecteezy
Confusion Allowed
The is my first Substack post for either two months or three, depending on how you’re counting. I actually suspended my Substack at the beginning of May, due to a very serious and mysterious illness, but was forced to publish an unscheduled defence of my Substack brand name at the end of that month — successfully, as it turned out. This post, too, is in a sense unscheduled, coming about purely because Neil Oliver invited me to have a conversation with him on his YouTube channel, and, as Neil likes to keep things more or less within the hour, I agreed. In part, it was a toe-in-the-waters exercise, because both the illness and the mystery remain, although I have been improving under some headings in the past fortnight or so. But I still don’t have a certified name for whatever it is that ails me. Hence, I’m nowhere near ready to resume the workload I’d been accustomed to bearing since I launched this platform six years ago, and nor can I be certain that I shall every regain even that limited quantum of energy. I hope I do, but cannot count on it. I continue to have excursions to the hospital and conversations with specialists who decline to wander outside their particular portfolios, which has possibly been the chief explanation for the endurance of the mystery factor. It may well be that I shall have to reassess my role and output on Substack, perhaps with a view to tailoring my cloth according to my new measure, but I don’t plan to make a definitive decision on that for the immediate future. I have, I believe, promised a review of the situation come September, and I’m hoping for some more progress in my state of health by that time.
Anyway, it feels good to be back, even if only briefly.
The conversation — which I know some of you will have heard already — is, I think, rather good. Neil and I have done a couple of previous ‘chats’ (it’s no secret that I hate that word in this context!) but I believe this is the best, and the rather impressive viewing numbers seem to bear me out. We tend not to start out with any specific plan, but to follow the line of our own thinking as we go. What I particularly like about this particular conversation is that, rather than ‘commentating’ or ‘opinionating’, it has us speaking as two guys shooting the breeze in a manner that is honest and unaffected. Neil and I disagree along the way, but not in a dogmatic way. I need his optimism right now, at the very least to challenge my darker thoughts. And yet, there is ample evidence and reason to be despondent, though I’m inclined, on my better days, to think that we have a better chance of facing what might happen if we treat the cloud that;s been cast over our world as the imposter that every fibre of my being wishes it to be.
Personally, I’ve gotten to the stage where I’m not sure what I feel about anything that’s happening. Am I an optimist or a pessimist? Do I have what it takes to go on? Could I bear being in the world and not be fighting for the chances of my beloved ones to have life even remotely as satisfying as the one I’ve had myself? Could I possibly embrace the ‘quiet life’ that some many my well-intentioned friends and loved ones urge upon me?
I dunno. But talking to Neil reassures me that my (temporary?) confusion is nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve no doubt that my state of health has a great deal to do with it, though this may be in part because my current weakness has lowered the defences of my denial, having me standing before the inevitability of what is threatened. In any event, I am immensely grateful to have the opportunity to speak with people like Neil again, and hope that I can gradually and gingerly continue to test the temperature of the water, and one fine day take that leap of faith that my current fragility renders so daunting. I hope it will be soon.
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