Progress Notes
Thoughts On A Dry Season
by
, 10-27-2013 at 12:36 AM (11330 Views)
"A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly."
Not much has been happening in UFOlogy for some time now. No controversial claims, no new dramatic sightings, no developments of note in Disclosure. Nothing.
When slow times like this come, website and forum clicks drop off and people lose some of their enthusiasm, often turning more to other pursuits. The people who count on traffic, click-throughs, page views, or book sales for income begin to get anxious and try to drum up some interest. Some will try to make a more or less routine case seems more important than it is. Others will go over their notes and start writing about cases and case details they left for a rainy day. Some reopen old cases like Roswell and Rendlesham Forest; the more honest with genuine issues and new challenges, the less honest with trumped up debunking and/or distortions of facts and circumstances nearly forgotten.
Some honest investigators, editors, and forum administrators contact everyone they know in UFOlogy and ask, beg for any scrap of real news they can write about, interview someone about, or even just promote their book. When that turns out also to be a dry well, we know that times are indeed tough and there is nothing to be done about it but wait...and finish that project sitting in dust.
We are a funny lot. A minority of a minority, odd beliefs and interests, some of us brilliant, some brilliant and troubled, some half-mad, a very few of us mad at all the others of us. We seek out that which is unknown to know it. We do this all for our own reasons but the one great human reason is to know, to achieve, to name and to conquer that which is unknown. These times, then, are a period of rest, respite, restoration, and a time to look to our maps and our gear before the trumpet sounds again. We are individualists, ones who rarely work together but for a brief time and some who work against everyone else while working to toward their own goals. Most of us long ago gave up explaining or justifying why we do what we do. We know that such explaining and justifying is pointless.
Unlike many other pursuits we work with a nagging thought that comes to bother us every so often--the thought that what we are doing is pointless, ridiculous, there is no "there" there. That this is all folly. If we are any good at denial or any of the other defenses we bury that troublesome thought and go on. We take a look around, remember to breathe and wait for something to happen.