It's a Practice, not a Marathon

If you don't read any more of this article, read this: Doing something is better than doing nothing.

Doing something, I say again, is better than doing nothing.

If you don't know what to do, call your sister or hang out with your friends or go for a walk. Tell someone what you're seeing and experiencing. Go dancing. Connect.

Take an action. Take ANY action. Yell. March. Write an article only 10 people will ever see.

Call your goddamn senator and tell him you're not happy.

Kiss your loved ones, eat a peach, sing, watch your favorite show or hatewatch your least favorite show. Stop looking at the news for 15 minutes. Go to a tea shop. Do jumping jacks. Stand on one foot. Read a book. Smell a flower. Fuck.

Play hooky from work or school or the entire rest of your life.

Things feel dire. Things ARE dire. This isn't normal, AND it doesn't help anything to sit in despair.

Admit how dire everything is, take a breath, and then move. But above all, keep moving.

It's not a real quote from Churchill, but it's still good advice:

When you're going through hell, keep going.

Last time this fascist tangerine was in office, a lot of people said things like "it's a marathon, not a sprint."

That was 4 to 8 years ago. This isn't a marathon any longer, it's a slog. It's a death march through a swamp where elected representatives have hired alligators to safeguard their offices. This is a trek, and not the store that sells bicycles.

The best (and by best I mean worst) part is that there's no obvious ending point. We're sitting at home, watching everything burn and waiting for the next collapse and wishing aliens would come take over the planet or something. Maybe a meteor. Or a power outage. Or a revolution. Something where we could all give up on America and go back to bed.

My work chat - and I work in research administration, so this is ground zero of this week's edition of lighting ourselves on fire to keep warm - blew up this afternoon because we got a study request for people to nap during the day. Several people said they'd like to see if the nap could last four years.

And that sounds great at first, right? Just go to sleep and wake up when someone else has found a way to fix it all.

Or I guess after it's had time to burn down and start over.

I wrote in the chat that if we all napped for 4 years, we'd just have the same shit to deal with when we woke up.

That was probably too spicy for work chat, but I'm fresh out of nuance this week.

I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if there IS an answer. I've read a lot of hot takes on emailed newsletters about what people are doing, and a thousand more hot takes about how everything is over and we're all screwed, but I definitely don't have your guide to best actions when I'm still working on mine.

So far I'm getting involved with the employee union here. I'm talking to people more often. I'm working out most days, and eating breakfast some days, and reading the news less than before, because as long as I can see the shape of things I don't need to know the up-close details of every action of this pixelated pile of shit we call our government these days.

I renewed my passport. We'll see if it comes.

I'm having dinners and band practice and going to trivia. I'm trying to write songs again. I'm doing the best job I can at taking care of my friends and colleagues and the parts of my family who talk to me. I write here, even though only 10 people will ever read it. I give money to people when they need it and I can.

And I'm moving forward, because forward is the only direction we have available to us, and because moving is better than trying to sleep for four years.

The slog is all I've got, even though I don't love it. I don't know if I've been through worse than what's coming, but I've certainly been through worse than what's happening to me, personally, right now. We'll see if that continues. I don't know if I'm optimistic, but I have the kind of brutal hope that keeps me from giving up.

And when there's no end to the race in sight, it's not a marathon anymore.

And hell, it beats hiding in bed and waiting for the meteor.