An update

Hi friends,

Thanks for stopping by. You may have noticed that I paused my daily blogging unceremoniously last week after 173 (!) posts. Phew.

What started as a fun project to jump-start my creative side again became a kind of catharsis as I worked through some residual grad school pains and the still fresh agony of our presidential election. I reached a point, though, where the daily post became a chore – not the good, productive, slog that comes with anything worth doing but more like a inconsistent, anxiety-inducing daily task. 

So, I stopped. Cold turkey. And then I ate some actual turkey for American Thanksgiving.

And then I had a had a good chat about it with my partner, D, while he was in town and I thought more about what’s really on my mind these days.

I’m genuinely struggling with how to stay informed about everything that’s going on with the presidential transition and the Dakota access pipeline to name just a few of the pressing issues facing humanity right now. How do I face all of this head-on and not lose heart in the face of such overwhelming injustice?

Well, author Barbara Kingsolver has some suggestions for where to start:

“If we’re getting up in the morning, we bring our whole selves to work. We talk with co-workers and clients, including Trump supporters, about our common frustrations when we lose our safety nets, see friends deported, lose our clean air and water, and all the harm to follow. We connect cause and effect. This government will blame everyone but itself.

We refuse to disappear. We keep our commitments to fairness in front of the legislators who oppose us, lock arms with the ones who are with us, and in the words of Congressman John Lewis, prepare to get ourselves in some good trouble. Every soul willing to do that is part of our team, starting with the massive crowd that shows up in DC in January to show the new president what we stand for, and what we won’t.

There’s safety in numbers, but only if we count ourselves out loud.”

So we have a lot of work to do. And each of us has a real responsibility to stand up and speak out, because everything matters now.

In reflecting on what I can do with this small but important space, I’ve decided to let go of a bit of the anonymity that I’ve intentionally kept up here and to start sharing more about what I spend most of my time on these days (when I’m not in class, worrying about the future of America, or sleeping).

It’s not overtly political, but it’s subversive in many ways.

It’s not particularly sexy, but it holds many exciting possibilities.

I hope you’ll stick around to hear more.

Stay tuned.

 

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