Well. There’s a lot going on. (Gestures vaguely to all this)
If you have an iPhone, you’ll find a setting called “Downtime” which allows you to disable all the apps on your phone without deleting them or anything so rash. You can do this for a scheduled period of time, or just turn it on or off wholesale when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Lest you panic about not having access to important things like Solitaire or your meditation app or the actual phone part of your phone, you can set certain apps to “Always Allow”. Thus, you can draw or write or even read a blog while simultaneously staying away from more frustrating types of content.
This isn’t to say that any of us should be burying our heads in the sand, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t burn all your outrage in the first week; we’ve got a ways to go, and they haven’t really even done anything yet…they’ve just promised to.
I’m not sure how this will all turn out. I want to have hope that kinder hearts will prevail, but have you seen the price of eggs? We may have no choice but to end democracy once and for all. Make Omelets Great Again!
I’d also like to talk more about the writing stuff and open mic nights and the Cats and drawings and things. I generally intend to do more commentary, to give a backstage view of the creative process as it coexists with family and work and Minecraft and other things. It just feels a little disingenuous right now.
The thing is, writing angry poetry or thinly-veiled allegory might make me feel better, but the people who need to read it certainly aren’t going to. It’s just more echo chamber preaching-to-the-choir. The choir gets it. They are not the issue. There are also plenty of people with larger social footprints who are saying (and have been saying, and will continue to say) what needs to be said.
It feels powerless. I think that’s how they want us to feel. Nothing we do even matters; like a pardon, it’s all undone.
But it’s not the end. It’s not even close.
They call it “being a rabbit”. I did it in my (lackluster) high school cross country days; I’d sprint out of the pack, keeping up with the fastest of the fast for a few hundred yards, and then I’d be cooked and I’d fall back. It felt nice for a bit. It would have felt better to have hung back in the first place and maybe finished a few places higher, a few seconds faster.
So I’ll try to use Downtime for the next…the next while, and avoid being a rabbit. I recommend a similar approach, if possible. There’s still a lot of good in the world, and we need to keep some in the tank for when we might need it.
Back to drawing cats.
P.S. I’m on Bluesky as @januaryriver.bsky.social so come say hi!
