My publisher has had to move his newspapers to subscription only, beginning in February. This was inevitable and just a sign of the time. We’re all micro-payments now and it adds up, but this is a few dollars and you can support local journalism. Find a weekly or community paper in your area and consider helping out. Democracy dies in darkness, I think someone said.

I have tons of say about local journalism, shoestring journalism on tiny budgets and few staff (most taking a cut). I can only suggest — you will miss it when it’s gone.

But since we’ve been moving to this situation, I’m not inclined to post columns here when they’re actually trying to stay afloat with the subscription mode.

So I’m thinking I’ll link to this site with a one-week delay, if you’re interested in my silly stuff.

So here’s the column for last week, Jan. 20. Click and read, your call.

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Seeking relief from the same old thing | Chuck's World 1/20/2021

Apparently I want comfort so badly I’m willing to crawl inside a cliché and pull the covers up, which is to say I started watching “The West Wing” the other night.

“TWW’ has been go-to solace for a lot of people during the Trump years, although I’ve been onboard since the pilot aired in 1999. I’ve always been a sucker for stuff like this, details about being backstairs at the White House, the daily activities surrounding the power of the American presidency.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of fiction and memoir about that strange building and what goes on in there, so this was an easy call.

I’ve seen other variations on life in the executive branch over the years, from soap opera to satire. Most people who should know have pointed to HBO’s “Veep” as the most accurate representation of life in Washington, D.C. The characters are universally ambitious, incompetent, corrupt, and loudly profane, so that’s a little depressing.

It’s hilarious, though.

I certainly understand people flocking to “The West Wing” over the past few years of dysfunction and division, looking for hope in a fiction about idealistic people just trying to do what’s right. It was on Netflix for years, easy to access, and there was a reason it won so many awards and accolades.

That’s not why I started rewatching for the millionth time. The reason, actually, is that I learned the show was finally leaving Netflix, heading for a new home on HBO Max. Since I subscribe to both, it was moot and pointless, although I told myself I’d just check it out, see if somehow they buffed up the soundtrack or something.

Really, I don’t need a reason. I just like the show. It’s comfort television.

And comfort is really what I’m talking about. It’s what we’re all talking about, one way or the other. Our lives have been upended and we’re all disoriented, I think. Familiar faces and plotlines are buried treasure, latent joy, just waiting for us to click, but it’s not just TV shows.

It’s food. It’s funny memes, it’s Colbert clips. It’s the weirdness of sports played in front of cardboard fans. It’s the weirdness of everything, practically calling out for comfort.

And I need comforting, apparently. In one of the “The West Wing” episodes I watched recently, as I kept an eye on the election returns from Georgia, a character noted that she was having some post-traumatic issues after being injured. She was being open and honest with a friend, and her symptoms sounded awfully familiar.

Irritability. Short-term memory problems. Tears for no reason, anger same. Sound like anyone you know?

Why is everyone looking at me?

Well. It’s definitely me, at any rate. And I’ve had it pretty easy.

I could give you a list of signs and symptoms, although I suspect your head would get tired of nodding. My eating habits are bizarre and I’m rarely interesting in cooking, given that I can no longer comfortably run up to the store spontaneously for a few extra potatoes or some chicken stock.

Regular exercise, once a daily routine, has become theoretical. My weeks, no longer broken up by social events, concerts, rehearsals, and dinners in actual restaurants with actual silverware, have devolved into tiny reminders of the old ways.

I take the trash out on Sunday evening; the rest of my week tends to look wide open, so things get a little blurry.

Sports seem odd and uninvolving. I followed the Seahawks but my heart was never in it, and once they lost that first playoff game football disappeared from my consciousness, possibly to reappear next month. Possibly not.

And what does get my attention makes me simultaneously want to look away. I have no idea what’s going to happen this week, although for most of you reading this it’s already happened. If we’re fortunate, we’ll see once again America’s mark on world history, the regular and uninterrupted peaceful transfer of power.

On the other hand, maybe next week I’ll be writing a completely different column. I try to stay away from predictions.

However you’re experiencing life these days, though, and with the big caveat that I have no professional training or inside information, I suggest that we’d all be better off if we can find a way to laugh on a regular basis.

I’ve been wondering about laughter. I’m not sure I’ve laughed very much, or at all, over these past months inside the house. I’ve probably been sarcastic a few times, occasionally ironic, perhaps sardonic, but I don’t think I’m producing much laughter, or experiencing it.

And then the other night I watched a video, a small clip of a stand-up comic. He was an elderly man, entertaining other senior citizens at some event, and he was practiced and smooth.

“I was in California,” he said, “and I asked a man if he could tell me the quickest way to get to the beach.

“He asked me if I was going to be walking or driving. I said, well, driving, and he thought about it for a minute and then said, ‘Yep, that would be the quickest.’”

I laughed and laughed at that joke, and then told it to my wife, who also laughed, and it was then that I realized we might just make it. Laughter may not always be the best medicine, but when it comes to comfort, it’s always the quickest way there.