Hello Darling Ones,

How’s February been treating you? Things have been alternating between awful and amazing here.

My sister had a breast cancer scare that required surgery and all that hullaballoo, but it’s benign.

There was also a sisterly job loss, but a better job came along and she’s so much happier.

There was a mouse in my house, but Los Gatitos hunted the teeny guy down and I got him into a box and released him outside.

Mostly, I spend my days trying to keep my mind and my hands busy so that I don’t think too much. Since I can’t work much this requires extra effort on my part.

I try to avoid thinking because nothing good comes of that. I’m creeping up on two years without a steady income and my savings have gone from five numbers to four numbers and soon to be three numbers. Just writing that sentence makes my breath come a little faster. We’ve enacted severe austerity measures here because I’m not optimistic about getting on the dole considering the current state of affairs.

From there my thinking spirals out into the current state of affairs and that doesn’t go well, then I get to add a sprinkle of shame on top of everything for being selfishly concerned about myself and not doing enough to change things.

It all quickly devolves into hopelessness and nihilism.

See why thinking is bad? So bad. Awful. Zero stars.

The problem that arises is that writing requires thinking. I love writing. I miss writing, but see little use in repeatedly writing about going bankrupt and being homeless while the world burns. It doesn’t even feel cathartic. It feels like shovel coal into the fiery furnace of anxiety.

So what’s a supergenius to do? I got a plan for that.

Between shoving murder mysteries into my brain and binging tv about cults, cons, and social media influencers (all kinda the same thing, no?), I’m reading Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life by Agnes Callard. This is, I’m sure, going to solve my problems. It’s been 30 years since I engaged with So Crates (in political theory classes not just “Bill & Ted’s”). With this book and magical thinning I’m going to get to a place where I can write about how much I loved Neko Case’s memoir and why social media influencers and family vloggers are so creepy and fascinating. Best of all I’m going to be able to do this without shouting about being destitute and being shipped off to a childless cat lady on SSRIs camp.

It’s gonna work. Right? RIGHT?

Not yet philosophically yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I dunno about you, but I’ve had it up to here with current events. And I’m 6’5″ and here is pretty high up.

I can’t with SCotUS. I can’t with shootings. I can’t with a fascist gameshow host stoking violence and then being shocked when there is violence. I can’t with a country that does nothing about violence and genocide in Palestine. I can’t with the death of one of the Heathers, and I really really cannot with the veneration of Richard Simmons who was the bane of my fat-kid existence.

A lot of you didn’t have to spend the summer you were 10 being forced to exercise to Simmons’ talk show while following some fad diet your mom found in like the National Enquirer and it shows.

With all the current events I can barely not deal with all my own bullshit. I got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow when I have to begin discussing the Social Security Disability application process (what I’m calling getting on the dole).

There’s so much I cannot deal with that I’ve had to work extra hard to ignore all the problems.

My work has included shot-gunning the Barbecue Showdown on Netflix. You know I love a good cooking show. This one is great because the judges are super knowledgable and everybody cries when someone goes home.

Crying along to barbecue is my new favorite pastime.

What makes this even better is I’m sitting here crocheting while watching and inhaling the aromas of a pork butt I have in the crockpot. As I watch these people sweating over fire pits and putting mop sauce on brisket I’m all, “we’re basically the same.”

Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

A few weeks ago on a Zoom with one of my clients, she looked into the camera, sighed heavily, and said, “Who knew the apocalypse would take so long?”

Her thought was so brilliant and spot on that I shared it with everyone I knew. When I told BFK, she said, “I was promised a flash of white light and then nothing.”

At the time I laughed. Nuclear war was hilarious a month ago. Today, not so much. Today every Cold War-related childhood anxiety has flared up inside of me. I keep thinking of that day in third grade when Kari Christ, with her blonde pigtails wrapped in pink ribbons turned in her desk and said, “If Ronald Reagan is elected we’re all going to die.” If I had known it would take forty-plus years I wouldn’t have lost so much sleep in the 80s.

I was so anxious about nuclear war that my usually lackadaisical at best, neglectful at worst parents decided that I could not watch “The Day After” even though every other person alive on the planet was. In retrospect I’m surprised they paid enough attention to me to recognize I was not okay and actually put in a modicum of effort to protect me.

Everything is a lot right now and I wish there was someone or some way to put in a modicum of effort to protect me from thirty years of anxiety crashing back into my brain like the Kool-Aid man.

Nobody ever taught us how to handle a multi-year pandemic in a nation teetering on fascism where voting rights are rapidly eroding, actual war is being waged on the other side of the earth, Texas is gearing up for genocide on trans and nonbinary children, and Florida is making it illegal to talk about homosexuality.

That list doesn’t even touch on the book banning, the rampant racism, the murderous cops, and the billionaires raking in the cash while prices on everything rise and people can’t survive on working 40 hours a week. And that’s just the external factors. This doesn’t even begin to address the personal demons and emergencies and emotional labor it takes to be a human on a good day.

What are we supposed to do during all this? Everything is pointless. I’m experiencing a strange sense of urgency to be productive, to carry on as if we aren’t living through an apocalypse. Do the work. Make the donuts. Despite the feeling of urgency, I’m stagnant. I think about the work, without actually doing it. I eat the donuts, but do not make them. This is a metaphor, I have never made donuts.

It’s easy to frown at the social media comedians as they joke through the 873rd unprecedented time we’ve had since March 2020. But what else are we supposed to do? I can sit and wring my hands and worry if I’m getting an ulcer, and that is somehow better than cracking jokes on Twitter?

All these things are happening and continue to happen and my daily life is unchanged. My routine remains the same: get up, exercise, coffee and Spanish, work or something like it, read, nap, eat dinner, stare at the tv, two melatonin and furious masturbation in the hope that sleep will come unimpeded and uninterrupted.

I spend all day and all night with a constant, quiet chant running through the back of my mind, “what does this mean? what does this mean? what does this mean?”

The sad part is with every recitation the this changes. What does my life mean? What does this chaos mean? What does my unchanged routine in the midst of chaos mean?

I don’t fucking know. Living in 2022 is hard, man.

Everything is a lot all the time and I don’t know what to do.

Anxiously yours,
Jodi

The post Being a Human in 2022 When Everything is A Lot All the Time appeared first on I Will Dare.

And if you don’t want to listen I’ll tell you that I think McCain picked Palin when that whole Hillary supporters who can’t back Barack story broke. This is McCain’s attempt to woo women and the hard right at the same time! It’s like a BOGO or something.

Of the many, many things we are learning about Ms. Palin, the most surprising is that her seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant. And, can I just say, my ass that McCain knew Bristol Palin was pregnant when he chose Sarah as the VP candidate. Nice try on that one Johnny.

But here’s what’s driving me so goddamn nuts about the Bristol Palin pregnancy debacle (and you should be surprised that it’s not my crushing disappointment to learn that Sarah Palin is really Trig Palin’s mom, because I really loved that story), it’s that every report states that she does plan on marrying the baby’s father.

It’s as though the only thing that could make this whole situation worse is if Bristol Palin didn’t marry her baby’s daddy. The only thing sadder than a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl is an unmarried, pregnant seventeen-year-old girl. Are you kidding me?

I love that there are still sectors of this country that think marriage is the panacea. Because now that she’s gonna get married all her problems are over. Phew, I am so glad she dodged that bullet.

Be thankful that I still haven’t found the ability to talk about the irony of Palin and McCain’s positions on sex education and women’s reproductive rights without my head exploding. This RNC just might give me a heart attack yet.

While last week’s DNC had me all weepy with hope and civic pride, I am sure this week’s RNC is going to give me chest pains and aneurysms.

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