Sometimes, a clean slate is exciting--the first day of an interesting new class or new job, the first page of a gripping novel you've been meaning to read, the first episode of a TV drama family or friends have recommended...Other times, however, a clean slate is irritating--the first day of a class you're only taking because it's required or a new job that pays well but whose subject matter doesn't interest you, the first page of a tedious book you're reading only because you'll fail the test on it if you don't read it, the first episode of a TV drama with a plot and characters who bore you, but you feel as though you'll be left with nothing to say around the water cooler if you don't at least glance at it...
...Today's clean slate feels to me--and many others, I suspect--like having to read a book whose subject matter puts you off and is downright alarming, at times. You keep reading the book, however, because that's what an informed citizen does. The ending of it has yet to be written--and you're not sure you even want to know how this story you never would have chosen will turn out...
Sometimes, the uncertainty of a clean slate is invigorating. Today, however, it's unnerving, at best.
