Confession.

They say confession is good for the soul.

It's probably even better for the blog.

I've been off-the-rails-busy since the start of the new year and this week and last were the worst (or best) of all.

In fact, I usually have two or three blog posts written by Sunday night for the week to come. Since I tend to 'front load' my weeks, this makes posting every day a bit more doable. However this week, going into Sunday night, I'd been too busy working to do any blog-writing.

It's been that way every day this week.

Sunday night I wrote Monday's post. Monday, I wrote Tuesday's. Tuesday, I wrote Wednesday's. It's late Thursday afternoon as I write this post, for Friday.

All that means is that my usual 'writerly gestation' is all off. I've no real time to do my walk-writing. To dope things out in my head. I've got nothing but my keyboard, my writing imperative and about an hour.

Today, with nothing to write about, I thought I'd throw out something I read a few years ago from two-time Pulitzer-winner Barbara Tuchman. As you might have guessed, it's called "Tuchman's Law."

I think it's something we should think about now and again. Whether you're dealing with creeping government repression, murder and nascent fascism, an upsetting of the world order, a wife who is invariably late, or teenagers who are sneaking cigarettes, making out and missing curfew.

Tuchman says. I've added my annotations in red:

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. (Unusual events, like wars or terror attacks appear more frequent when you reflect on them. You remember them so they stand out. Like that time your zipper broke.)

Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. (The persistence of normal is the key here. Even when 9/11 happened, you still had to cook dinner, get the kids to bed, walk the dog. There are giant disturbances, but life goes on.) 

The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. (Most days come and go without incident or upset. Thank goodness.) 

This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply.) (The incessant chatter and 'breaking newsness' of an event magnifies its presence in your frontal lobe--and can make it seem overwhelming.)

If you don't quite understand "Tuchman's Law," listen to one-minute and eleven seconds of Harry Shearer from his radio show "Le Show." 

You'll see in just a few seconds how everyone and everything are trying to scare the crap out of us.