Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr #2

The current government brouhaha/hullabaloo exhausts me. I'm considering slipping back into NewsBlackoutLand where I stood, firmly, for two years, eyes shut, ears muffled, mouth gagged. It's much more pleasant there! And, amazingly enough, my lack of attention to The News for two years had zero impact on anything, except my blood pressure.

Negotiating the Washington Health Exchange site — where a self-insured bozo like meself goes to kneel at the altar of The Affordable Care Act to plead my case — is proving to be confounding. I was repeatedly given the message that my application could not be processed because, according to "their" records, I could not be validated as an actual person. Which begs the question: if I'm applying for the first time here, what records would they have? But then I remember: it's the internet, and the internet knows all. (Which begs this further question: if the internet knows all, then just what are these records that they claim to have in their possession that give evidence to my invalidity and lack of actualness?!)

("*&$*%&($@_# ", she screamed — she the invalidated, the unactualized.)

(According to Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, to achieve a state of self-actualization, one must first satisfy ones basic needs, safety needs, social needs and esteem needs. Isn't access to affordable health care a basic need, a safety need? This all seems to be a circular argument designed to shuttle me off to the Bin of Loonies.

And furthermore, if I lack proper health insurance and fall victim to maiming and disfigurement, then I may very well become an invalid, thus reinforcing their claim of my non-validness.

And if, according to Maslow, achieving a state of self-actualization means "acceptance of facts", then in this case it means acceptance of my state of non-actualness, as per the Washington Health Exchange.

In other words, self-actualization = non-actualness.

Well, damn. Maybe it's all true.)

At one point I was told to contact Technical Support, but there was no way to contact anyone/thing.  I don't seem to be able to help myself from thinking that this is a conspiracy perpetrated by my current insurance company to get me to abandon the process of seeking a different insurer (and a subsidized premium) and thereby buckle down and pay their exorbitant rates.

I hereby register grrr #2 for the week of September 29th.

And while barely treading water in the sea of rejection notices (from poetry mags), I awoke yesterday to landfall in the form of an acceptance from this Irish journal:

The editors took a very short 9-line poem, from a group of five poems in a narrative theme. Interesting in that they apparently think it stands on its own. The only constant in these many years of publishing poetry is that I'm consistently surprised by the responses of editors — it's a crapshoot. Go figure.

In the meantime, I'm going to work on becoming validated and actual. Tips and suggestions heartily welcomed.