I’ve been in something of a blogging slump. I mean, it seems weird to be blogging about say, my newfound love of salted butter, in a world in which the financial markets are all collapsing and we have a president-elect who astonishes one every day with his deliberation and well, leadership. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this way. As though I have a government I could actually trust to do the right thing — that is, even if they’re not doing every little thing I’d like, that I trust is actually working for the good of the nation (and the good of the global community). I’m finding it a little unsettling — unsettling in a good way, but unsettling nonetheless.

I’m also a little unmoored by the sudden manner in which the nation has been plunged into living small — and the screeching from the media that by doing so, we’re destroying the American economy. Something seems off to me. If our economy is so delicate that by simply not buying a new car every year we can destroy it, then perhaps we need to rethink our relationship to “growth” — as even Obama has said, every crisis bears an opportunity, and perhaps this is one. Can we, as a nation, rethink our relationship to stuff? Do we really need to consume at the rate we have been? Can we dial it back without causing a total collapse? Where is the balance?

I’m a little disoriented. It might take a while to figure out what it means to live in a world where you don’t actually feel like you’re shouting in the wilderness.