Stemming the Flood

I’ve found myself, since mid-weekend, with a vastly reduced desire to write about Katrina and its aftermath. I’ve spent a bit this morning trying to figure out why, and have come up with a number of possible reasons why I no longer feel so compelled to post every frantic thought that goes through my brain. A few of them, below the fold.

— The situation, while still devastating, and far as yet from “under control,” has finally begun to be taken in hand. And thank god. If there’s a hero in any of this (and, I believe, a future governorship, should he want it), it’s that John Wayne dude, General Honore.

— Other bloggers are doing a much better job of bringing together resources and analyzing the situation than I am capable of, at this moment. See, for instance, Chuck’s and G Zombie’s assessments. My brain, after over a week of non-stop worry, has devolved into scrambled eggs, and I’m just not able to process any more information.

(Which is not to say that I’m suffering compassion fatigue; far from it. I’m still devastated by what’s happened, still reading all the reports I can find, still looking for further ways that I can help. It’s just that it’s clear to my that my fuzzy-headed analysis wouldn’t help right now, and that other bloggers have got my back.)

— The much-dreaded mainstream media has finally awakened from its long slumber, and is behaving like the critical force it ought to have been for the last six years. (And yes, that last link indicates that there was even such a blip in the All-Spin Zone. They’ve gone back to singing the praises of the administration, by and large, but even the reporters at FauxNews saw reality through the spin for a brief moment.)

— Finally, and this one is just about me personally: I tend a tiny bit toward post-traumatic stress. About two weeks after 9/11, once the initial shock began to wear off, I started having nightmares. All night, every night, dreams of death and destruction and panic. And they lasted way longer than I care to admit, and they returned at the drop of a hat.

The Katrina dreams started over the weekend. My unconscious has been bringing me search-and-rescue dreams, being-trapped dreams, drowning dreams, all night. So I’m not sleeping very much, and the exhaustion is seriously interfering with my work. I need to get my dream life to chill a bit, so I can get some proper sleep, or my entire semester and everything I want to accomplish during it could go down the crapper. [EDIT: Upon rereading, this sounds awfully selfish. Perhaps it is. No matter how bad my semester gets, it will be nowhere near so destroyed as those of faculties at the many area colleges and universities, many of whom have lost both homes and work. I certainly don’t mean to ask for sympathy for my situation, which obviously pales in comparison.]

So: less posting on the Gulf Coast situation. Trust me when I say that it’s not that I’ve stopped paying attention to it; I’m just having to discipline myself not to obsess over it, and am gratified that there are others out there willing to obsess over it for me.