If this isn't overstepping, do you have any advice for not falling into defeatism? You seem good at having hope for the future.
not overstepping at all! i would not personally describe myself as someone who is dealing with all of this very well but i do try to be intentional about a few things.
remembering that staring into the void is impractical
what i mean by that is saying or thinking, like, "everything is terrible and people as a species are getting worse and nothing meaningful can be done about any of it" even when it feels true, has no hope of resulting in any degree of improvement for anyone.
a question i try to ask myself is, "who does this behavior benefit?" the fascism of this government is actively helped by our doomerism, by our sense that nothing can possibly change and so we might as well stay home and do nothing. getting yourself in a mindset where you can do a little bit is always preferable, even if it doesn't feel as true as embracing nihilism.
(at the same time, i try to remember that as a cis white person, i am always shielded from the worst of what's happening, and to try to hold compassion for people i know who are in more danger than me by virtue of the bodies they live in. but after i've listened to them and let them vent and tried to show up for them, i have to remind myself that sinking into despair such that i can't do anything will not help them or anyone else.)
2. watching my media intake
a related point, but i think in some lefty corners there is a sense that staying informed to the point of traumatizing yourself, and then constantly continuing to do that, is a form of activism, but especially if there's no action attached to it, i have pretty complicated feelings about this.
i go back and forth on how much news i seek out but there is a point of news saturation where i will be essentially comatose with horror, and i have to periodically remind myself that it is better to stay zesty enough to have the energy to volunteer and call my reps and give to worthy causes (and vote in local/midterm elections but those don't happen as often) than it is to be so informed that i succumb to nihilism. i don't recommend knowing nothing, you understand, but putting some limits on news-related doomscrolling.
3. paying attention to what does or doesn't help me
look, i love desperately unhappy music. Aimee Mann and Elliott Smith are some of my all-time favorite artists. but especially in the colder, grayer months, i do not really listen to them. apple music tells me my top two artists this year were Maude Latour and Tunde Olaniran, specifically albums that lean fairly poppy. i didn't have to force myself to listen to this music or anything—i greatly enjoy it! but it is the result of choosing something that will energize me over something that will leave me feeling worse. Guante was also very high in my artists list, which is political music where the ultimate message is "pick yourself up and keep going." (sort of similar spiritually, if not sonically, to mid-aughts Ted Leo—like, let's acknowledge the void and then let's stand up and try to do something about it.)
4. channeling my feelings into doing something
not everyone can go to protests. not everyone has the money to fundraise, or the time and energy to volunteer. but finding some little corner of the problem and doing what you can will make you feel some fraction of a fraction less hopeless.
5. making time to go offline and connect with humans i know and like in real life
other people have made this point better but much of the internet is a machine designed to make you feel angry and/or depressed. face to face conversations with people you enjoy are a good way to replenish your brain chemicals and to remember there's still a lot of good in the world.
6. remembering routine maintenance
i joke about letting laundry fall behind in the face of all this horror but the truth is, i feel better if my hair is washed and my clothes are clean and i've moved my body for the day and eaten a protein and a vegetable. on some level, we truly are animals and all that zoo enrichment stuff is absolutely true. maddening, but true.
7. embracing harmless things that make me happy
in the same way that any pleasure can be a guilty pleasure when you have enough anxiety, any guilty pleasure can be a normal pleasure if you grant yourself the grace of sometimes just doing what feels good. i do try to maintain some sort of balance of still challenging my brain, but when things are really bleak, i am gonna occasionally hole up and take in some media that will however briefly make me feel okay.
again, i want to state that to me, i am not doing a consistently good job of avoiding defeatism. i feel very, very bad a lot of the time. honestly, this year was hard, for any number of reasons, most prominently for me that my dad is dying of a series of brain tumors that are on track to kill him slowly and painfully. when i say "don't stare into the void too long," i say it because i know how corrosive that can be, because i have done it. i try to keep most of that off this blog because i don't think it does any good to spread my pure despair around. but at the very least, these are some things that keep me from doing worse.
