Rage Against the Chains

Have you ever had a night when you just can't sleep because you have too much stuff going on in your head?

Yup. This is one of those nights.

You know, I'm not even sure, after all this time, if I even still have an audience for this thing, or if I ever had one in the first place. Obviously, I have posted precious little here. At first, I thought maybe it was because I simply didn't have anything to say. Well, maybe that's part of it. I'm a fairly private person. Most of the stuff I really need to say I share only with my loved ones.

Still, there was a time when I had plenty to say about a lot of different subjects. I used to rant about a wide variety of things. Ethical issues. Moral issues. Cyclists' issues. Computers. Films. Writing. There used to be a veritable plethora of things I used to like to talk about in public forums, but lately I just haven't felt like saying much. I'm not sure why. I know I've been depressed, but I've been depressed before and I haven't neglected my online activities, at least not for this long.

It's not just this blog I've been neglecting, either. Check out my E-mail:


As you can see, the first message has been sitting in my inbox since June 4th. I just couldn't be bothered with writing replies lately. Except for announcements of what movies I'm going to on the weekend and the occasional private E-mail, I have hardly touched my E-mail since June. Heck, before I weeded through the messages recently to eliminate anything I didn't want to reply to, there was well in excess of 700 messages in there. Lately, I just haven't felt much like being on the computer. I guess I've had too much on my mind.

Tonight, I found myself tossing and turning in bed, mind racing with a cacophony of worries and frustrations. Anyone who knows me knows I worry about the people I love in my life, and I worry often. Lately, I've been frustrated by the fact that there are now several people in my life, all of whom I love and all of whom have problems that I cannot help with. I hate that feeling, when I know someone I love is in pain and there's nothing I can do about it. I just makes me feel so helpless, like I'm chained down.

That's when an image started to come to me. Me chained against the wall, watching person after person I love getting hurt and not being able to do anything about it.

Whenever I get an image like that in my mind, I know a poem is coming on. So I dashed out to the computer, fired up AppleWorks, and wrote down the first words that came to me: "Rage Against the Chains." That became my title. From there, I just focused on the images in my mind and the feelings in my heart, pounding them into they keyboard until I came up with this:


That pretty much encapsulates the feeling that's been keeping me up tonight.

Now that I've got that out, maybe I can finally get some sleep. A few hours at least.