Help! I am entangled in a doom loop Bluesky, The Guardian, AP News hell that I don’t seem to be able to escape. I want to turn off the worry sometimes, stop the flow of information, to turn to art, to be out of my thoughts and at least briefly unaware of the sorry state of our nation, currently run by a group of cowardly, pathetic people who bring destruction and shame upon the U.S.
I canceled my Washington Post subscription, have left the rest of the Bezos universe mostly behind, am disentangling from Meta to a slightly less successful extent. I am supporting independent journalism (shoutout to Marisa Kabas, the journalist behind The Handbasket, to Chris Geidner, behind Law Dork, as well as to Issac Saul’s Tangle News). I give money. I boycott. I anticipate protesting. I dream of tagging Cybertrucks with swastikas, something to remind the purchasers of who and what they are supporting (alas, I lack to chutzpah to take this one on and mainly “tag” the tin can trucks and tinder Teslas with strong looks of disgust).
And then there is my job, where I listen, take in pain, help folks make sense of senselessness, provide hope, hopefully make space for self-love despite all the messages of unworthiness that so many of us absorb from day one.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep. Breaths.