I stopped writing this blog for five months or so. I don’t really have a reason why, other than just .. I didn’t feel like I had anything to say, I guess. Topics eluded me, or the moment never quite seemed right, or the anxiety that always comes with writing just didn’t seem worth it. I took a break.
I might still be on break. I don’t exactly feel like I want to dive head first into writing a post or two a week. I’m unsure that I want to spend that much time with my own thoughts. Articulating them .. stress-testing them .. getting frustrated with myself once I see those ideas written out and realize they don’t make as much sense as I perhaps thought.. maybe it’s not worth it.
One thing I might as well throw out there, though, since we’re here..
The election.
I’m trying my best “not to think about it too much,” but what does that even mean. I’m reminding myself not to scroll the news sites.. not to click on every new poll or scrap of reporting from the rallies. I quit x/twitter.1 But the truth is, I’m holding my breath through all of it, and I have been for weeks.
I don’t know what’s going to happen on Tuesday, but more than anything I feel this intense pressure on myself to just. not. care. too. much. I don’t want to be *invested* in all this to the extent that I fear I am. I want Kamala to win, and a second Trump presidency would be disastrous, sure, but … so what? If he wins, he wins.2 I still have a partner in Sam, and I have friends in my life who I cherish and who sustain me. Sam and I still have our hopes and plans for the future, and we’re building a life together. I have a city I love to live in, and life is still full of enough challenges and art and people and cute dogs and beautiful things to keep all of us going for countless lifetimes. There are still books to read and races to be run and trips to plan and places around the world I want to visit. I’m healthy. I can grow as a person. I can make connections. Our lives are impossibly, improbably, spectacularly great, and an election won’t change any of that.
If this all sounds like self-care therapy speak, that’s because that’s exactly what it is. I want good things to happen on Tuesday, and I want to be a responsible, informed citizen who participates in our democracy.. but MORE than that I want to do whatever it takes to avoid the emotional trainwreck of 2016-2017. I want to not give over vast swaths of my brainspace to the orange menace. I want to avoid reading story after story about THE RESISTANCE and who’s leading what doomed, righteous, angry fight to unearth CORRUPTION at the highest levels that no one will then do anything about. I want to never think about Rachel Maddow. I want to avoid turning over my sense of personal wellbeing to the chaos of the miserable, over-hyped news cycle.
In other words.. I don’t to be back where I was, seven years and 50 weeks ago when I wrote the following letter. Earlier today I was digging out a closet, and through some profound, cosmic coincidence I found a copy of a letter I sent to a friend in November 2016. I’d completely forgotten I sent this (or that I made a copy of it). I was living in DC at the time, and working for the Environment Division of DOJ, prosecuting enforcement cases against industrial facilities under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. It was a great job, and I’ve written before about how much I loved living in DC and all, but .. this time eight years ago, life was not great. As I wrote to my friend then:
Of course.. I’d be lying if I said my writing you didn’t have something to do with the recent election. It’s been just over a week now, and I’ve finally gotten to the stage where I can try writing about it. It’s still very, very hard. I hope you’re handling it ok. I’ve barely spoken to anyone because I’m still not sure what I can say that isn’t just obvious and awful.
Being in DC is especially hard. It’s as if everyone in the entire city is simultaneously going through a divorce or death in the family or similar tragedy. Nerves are short. People are sad and tired. I’m worried for our country of course, but I’m trying to take as much of this as I can in stride — if the next four years are bad for the environment or health care or the Supreme Court, so be it. This is the price to be paid for losing elections.
But aside from all that.. I mostly feel as though something has been taken from me. I belong to this city and I enjoy being here and doing the work I do because collectively we all care about the same things — we want to improve the lives of people through public service, and we respect the offices and institutions that allow that to happen. This is — in a sense — my church. It’s the thing I belong to that helps orient and define my place in this community.
But that’s gone now. Or at the very least, it is being so violently upended by someone who is demonstrably unfit and unable to meet the challenge he’s been given. And so this church is no longer the sanctuary or anchor I thought it was.
So I guess that’s where things stand now. I don’t really read the news anymore and I don’t want to. The sense of ambition and drive to do more for this institution is largely gone. And I need something in my life that will take its place. Like the person going through the divorce or the family death — I need to re-dedicate myself to something else — both to stay busy and to fulfill a sense of purpose.
So I don’t know. Maybe I start going to a lot more concerts now, or I dedicate myself to getting better at playing guitar. Maybe I become more serious about my gym, or I join a running or cycling club. I just don’t know yet. I am still in shock and I am trying to numb myself to what the next six months will bring — let alone the next four years.
Ultimately I guess I have to see if I still belong in this town anymore. I just don’t know yet. But thanks for listening. This letter has helped a bit, I think. Hopefully more to come as the situation improves.
I don’t live in DC anymore, but reading this.. I just can’t get over how personally I took 2016. How personally we *all* took it. It was like.. that election was something that happened to *me* and it derailed *my* life in some violent, horrible way I wasn’t willing to accept. Maybe I was just being hurt and over-dramatic about everything, but.. I think DC really did feel like that. My job certainly felt like that. I don’t know what’s going to happen Tuesday, but I’ll be damned if I give that much of myself over to a presidential election again. I just can’t do it.
Anyway. Election night will be here soon. Not sure I can bring myself to watch. Not sure I have the strength to avoid watching, either.
God, I hope everything goes ok on Tuesday. But even if it doesn’t, everything will still be ok.
My new hot take about x/twitter is that it’s bad and using the platform is morally indefensible insofar as it serves the interests of Elon Musk, who is bad, supports bad people, and wants bad outcomes for this country. If left-wing “accountability culture” means anything, SURELY it means that we can all stand up for our values by not further enabling Musk. Twitter and the toxic agenda Musk is attempting to promote through Twitter is only possible because people use it. Stop using it.
I know this is a totally unsatisfying attitude to just toss out there like that. If he wins it could be really bad! But like.. bad how? Bad to what extent? I don’t know, and I can’t know, so.. what more is there to say about it? I like Matt Yglesias’s framing of like… if the WORST possible version of a Trump presidency is only 10% or 20% likely.. that’s a huge risk I’d rather not take, but.. what’s the appropriate amount of worry to devote to something catastrophic that has a 10% chance of happening? I don’t know. Ross Barkan thinks it doesn’t matter, because our country is too big, with too much government and too much bureaucracy for fascism to really take hold. It’s not exactly a reassuring argument to read, but.. I think he’s probably right.
Welcome back and thanks for sharing. As a fellow DCer in 2016 I totally relate with how you felt after that election. I'm also similarly steeling myself for what comes next this year, and mostly just attempting to not dwell on it too much...