hard not to feel like it's all too far gone.
a newsletter
Hello! I’m keeping this week’s newsletter low-fuss. I almost cashed in my “sick day” allowance to skip this week, not because I’m sick, but because I’m feeling a bit crazed. I don’t have a good personal reason to feel crazed, in the sense that my life is, today, pretty normal.
I am sitting at my desk and working, I’m drinking clean water and a cup of coffee, I’ve got food, I’ve got my cats, and I’ve got my medications. My family is generally okay and I was able to call my sister for her birthday today. I feel a little depressed, but not that bad, not enough to hole up under the covers or to self-sabotage too terribly.
Still, here are some of the things making me feel crazed that don’t directly change any of those previously mentioned personal circumstances:
The United States continues give Israel encouragement to act as a force of terror and destruction against anyone who is brown and/or Muslim.
Palestine is suffering, and has been suffering for a full year plus the decades of harm the United States and Europe have enabled.
Climate collapse! And our complete unwillingness as a country to enable any kind of response to it! Can we stop with the oil subsidied!
The calls I’ve gotten to “be sure I’m registered to vote!” Which, of course, sure, I’m still on board with voting even though I think supporting any presidential candidate at this moment will be maybe the most nausea-inducing act of business-as-usual that I’ve taken part in in quite some time.
I met up with a friend yesterday and we discussed how it feels generally like things are done, all washed up, that things are impossible.
Why try and buy a house when the next decade of climate events is impossible to predict? How could American infrastructure possibly catch up with where it needs to be? What are the chances that American society will be able to connect the dots that organized labor is a net good, that work is a means to an end, and that endless growth is in fact bad? Why is everyone a baby now? We did not have answers.
One of the hardest parts of all this for me is how virtue-signaling and virtue-chasing works its way into the mix. Why does it feel like everyone has a brand? Are we all just executing our brand strategies? Are we even people anymore? Anyone else freaked about this, or just me?
Said another way: If the emperor is naked (duh, he is), then who’s going to be the first to say it?
In the classic story, it’s some kid; is that what we’re waiting for? I fear that if the kid did step up and say it, we’d end up moving their attention elsewhere and then educating them to see that, in fact, what the emperor is wearing can be considered clothes, just clothes that the kid will understand better when they’re older. And then we’ll get the kid into so much debt that they can’t see past it and they’ll forget they ever thought about what the emperor was wearing at all.
Often lately I’ve been on the verge of texting things to friends or posting IG stories that I think would get me put on a list. Not because I’m going to actually do anything extreme (here I am, practically begging the NSA to pay attention to me), but because I lack any kind of conception of how change will happen at this point without something dramatic to kick it off. But I think this is, at its core, more a lack of imagination than a belief in a best way to accomplish something.
I can look in the mirror and see clearly how I’ve been conditioned to believe that a single person blowing up a building1 will have a greater impact than a collective of people working in tandem on something very unsexy like mutual aid or sustained public interest campaigns. That’s a product of American individualism. You forget that groups of people are required to get work done. You forget that leaders are supposed to be employees of those they lead, not the other way around. You think you really are an individual.
I’m going to try and focus on some ways I can cultivate feelings of autonomy and self-determination without sacrificing connectedness.
Spend time volunteering in Philly, somehow with kids, somehow with the elderly, and somehow with the unhoused.2 Holding myself accountable to having something to show here by the time I’m plugging my nose and voting next month.
Read scholars who know things about what is happening and how it’s happened. Educate myself, focusing on experts who aren’t holed up in academia.
I’ve begun pitching written work. This has little to no impact on the issues that are making me crazy, but I’m shooting for 100 rejections by the end of the year.
Clean my house, cook food, make art. Drink less, smoke less, go on walks. Sew a blanket for my niece.
What’s working for you? Anything?
I’m going to send out the New Moon in Libra horoscope tomorrow, a day late (we’ll officially start the new Moonth in about an hour). Thanks for your patience. I appreciate you all <3
I just feel I have to say, again, for the NSA or my employers or my mother, that I am not going to blow anything up or commit a terrorist attack. I’ll leave that to Israel and America.
I think I “committed” to this earlier this year, but then I totally didn’t take any steps.
🙏🏻! I am in Fishtown living in recovery and volunteer in Kensington. If you have any interest in being of service to a population that really needs help let me know and I’ll share some of the places I spend my time.