It Just Gets Darker

The balance between keeping my sanity and being a responsibly-informed citizen is so incredibly difficult. The “flood the zone” approach – which has gone on much longer than this administration’s first week – leaves me exhausted, which is the point of it. The obtuse misunderstanding of the way language works depending on context – the use of the word “probationary” to mean NOT “on probation due to performance issues” but “new at this job”; the idea that “rare earth metals” are scarce (they are not); frankly, the idea that words can only mean one thing – as the basis for governmental policies is just plain distressing.

Particularly as someone who relies on definitions to make a living.

My new strategy has been, essentially, headline-only. Don’t dive too deeply; know just enough to know that digging any further would cause harm. Focus on other, more productive things – things I have some control over. The podcast. The job search – for either full-time or consulting work. My apartment – decluttering and throwing a ton of seasonal stuff into storage. Reading and writing and going to the gym. Signing petitions and emailing Congresspeople.

It’s not exactly turtling. But it is a form of self-protection – devoting my attention to that which can be solved, that which I have some control over, and not risking emotional harm by agonizing about the possibility of Musk backing up a Swastikar to Fort Knox and emptying it out.

I mean, the level of stupidity – just pure, unadulterated stupidity – is about tied with the level of cruelty in the federal government right now. Some of that can give rise to much-needed humor.

Tonight I have therapy. Tomorrow, I’m cleaning my apartment. Wednesday and Thursday I’m networking. And that takes me to Friday, when I bundle up the remainder of my seasonal shit and haul it all to storage. It’s so important to have plans. In the words of Simon Amstell:

You just have to make plans, you have to make plans. If you live alone, and you don’t make plans, here is what happens: you wake up … And it just gets darker.

It’s getting darker. We need to make plans.