My Doom Bucket Overfloweth but Can’t Weigh Me Down.

I had work to get done last night but I started out dumb and looked at news.  I turned it off after dinner, finished my urgent task, tried to be present for a bit. I went to bed far too late refreshing a screen that kept looking worse. I went to bed and slept a few hours hoping that I’d wake up to the screen showing something positive. I was up an hour before my first alarm. I took in the horror with my first cup of coffee. I don’t know if I ate breakfast today and I gave away most of my lunch.

I had to face the day, so I faced the day. I took care of people today. I connected them with resources, made space for big feelings, and helped people to see there were things they could do, many of them little things to take care of themselves and to make positive change. It wasn’t as hard as I anticipated and there was something slightly healing about it. I’d anticipated a day of collective horror and grief and nothing else but that wasn’t how it went because I woke up and I told myself a simple truth: In so many stories there’s a point when all seems lost, the protagonist seems defeated and unable to move forward, but then they continue anyway and triumph against incredible odds. We’re at that all seems lost phase but we’ve got pulses so we can keep going. The election may be done, things look impossibly bad, but we keep going and even if all goes wrong, we know we tried.

Feel the big feelings,  scream into the void, remember to eat, drink some water, be kind to yourself, and take care of yourself. We’ll find a way forward. I’m avoiding the news. I don’t want to hear any f’ing speeches or commentary, and my bucket of doom and gloom overfloweth enough. Adding to my doom-bucket doesn’t help me carry on.  Go make something in this world better, even a tiny something, that’s part of how we fix this, and no, that doesn’t mean you have to go break bread with antagonists, in fact, we need to stop doing that bullshit.