I care. A lot. And not only do I care, I want to know what I care about. I am not content with the talking points; I want facts, details, actual knowledge. I care, I learn and I act. I get out and do something about what I care about. I try to be, as the saying goes, the change I seek.

And I frequently do absolutely nothing at all. A classic conundrum.

Take health care. On Saturday, I will be doing with the Bus Project to walk for health care reform. We'll be joined by Health Care for American Now! and Organizing for America, and we'll be informing people in the Salem area about changes made here in Oregon that will cover all children. This is an important step forward for the state, and I'm happy I will be able to help in a small way.

I am also trying to learn all I can about the issue. I'm trying to understand "fee for service" and "single payer" and "whatever the hell Wyden is pushing" and all the other various elements. I try to follow Baucus' latest attempts to destroy real change in order to provide zero votes from Republicans. I am taking notes, using Evernote to capture and, I hope, organize information.

And, as I said above, I am doing nothing at all. Joining with the Bus? I'm just showing up. Richelle and the rest of the Politicorps team are doing the the actual doing. I'm just giving a few hours, which do matter, of course, but actual doing. Writing, organizing, real involvement that goes beyond the easy superficial activity of a few hours on a Saturday. Nothing.

The problem, apart from a paying-the-bills job that sucks away most of my day, is that I have yet to find a way to focus on doing one concrete, useful thing each day. There is so much I want to do and so much I visualize myself doing, that I end up doing nothing. The list of Things That Doing By Me is extraordinarily long. It is very large, too, and frightening. It is an 18-wheeler roaring towards me at 75 mph, and I'm the scared little bunny sitting on my haunches staring up at it and waiting to become roadkill.

This is why we have Zen, of course, and I know that, but try to get me to practice any of the precepts?

So if health care reform fails, please feel free to blame me for not doing anything because I wanted to do so much. Maybe what I am doing at this moment — I chose one thing, and I did it, letting everything else I might have chosen just sit in a corner and wait for its turn — will help me learn the lesson I have been trying to teach myself for a very long time:

I cannot save the world. I can only use the next few minutes wisely.

Or not.