{"id":8026,"date":"2021-04-20T23:02:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T06:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=8026"},"modified":"2021-04-20T23:02:43","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T06:02:43","slug":"got-the-blahs-read-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=8026","title":{"rendered":"Got The Blahs? Read A Book!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In case you haven&#8217;t noticed, we haven&#8217;t published many posts in 2021. Joe Biden is doing a great job so far, but our motivation levels here at the Bucket are anemic. Maybe we&#8217;re still fatigued from four years of non-stop insanity from Trump and the Republicans. Or maybe we&#8217;re dismayed with all the continued mass shootings, the ongoing pandemic, the Chauvin trial, anti-maskers and continued Republican chicanery. We weren&#8217;t sure why we&#8217;ve been so demotivated lately but <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"we found an article about having the blahs that suggested a cause and possible solution (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/04\/19\/well\/mind\/covid-mental-health-languishing.html\" target=\"_blank\">we found an article about having the blahs that suggested a cause and possible solution<\/a>. Just like a lot of Americans, we seem to be languishing &#8211; a feeling of joylessness and aimlessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the solutions for languishing is focusing on a small goal and give yourself uninterrupted time to accomplish said goal. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"We'll refer to a post from a year ago when America had just started quarantining from the pandemic (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=7368\" target=\"_blank\">We&#8217;ll refer to a post from a year ago when America had just started quarantining from the pandemic<\/a>.  We recommended everyone read a book. Guess what? We still highly recommend it. Take a look at the reading list we provided, chock full of informative, entertaining books pertaining to science, nature, politics and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also recommend books over at<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" Copper Cactus E-books (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.coppercactus.com\/ebooks.html\" target=\"_blank\"> Copper Cactus E-books<\/a>, which contains science fiction stories by budding Arizonan sci-fi writer S. Zarkon.  <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">His primary series, <strong>Tales of Zarkon<\/strong>, which are inspired by <\/a><em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Twilight Zone<\/a><\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">,\u00a0<\/a><em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">Strange Tales<\/a><\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0and\u00a0<\/a><em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"His primary series, Tales of Zarkon, which are inspired by The Twilight Zone,\u00a0Strange Tales\u00a0and\u00a0The Outer Limits (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.szarkon.com\/toz.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Outer Limits<\/a><\/em>, are science fiction\/suspense stories exploring the quirky, dark and bizarre aspects of humanity and reality. Strange twists and odd turns will lead the reader down shadowy paths where anything can happen and nothing is as it seems. And many of Zarkon&#8217;s tales are set in Arizona, too. Hopefully, we&#8217;ll all get through our languishing period and some normalcy will return to our lives soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"368\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/szarkonebookstalesofzarkon1.jpg\" alt=\"Got the blahs? Read a science fiction story like one of S. Zarkon\u2019s Tales of Zarkon at szarkon.com.\" class=\"wp-image-8029\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/szarkonebookstalesofzarkon1.jpg 500w, http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/szarkonebookstalesofzarkon1-300x221.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption>Got the blahs? Read a science fiction story like one of S. Zarkon\u2019s Tales of Zarkon at szarkon.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In case you haven&#8217;t noticed, we haven&#8217;t published many posts in 2021. Joe Biden is doing a great job so far, but our motivation levels here at the Bucket are anemic. Maybe we&#8217;re still fatigued from four years of non-stop insanity from Trump and the Republicans. Or maybe we&#8217;re dismayed with all the continued mass &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=8026\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Got The Blahs? Read A Book!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1695,355,2328,2138,2086,2129,1030,1965,1390,2135,2329,1117,2139,2132,596,291,730,2131,2133,2130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8034,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions\/8034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}