Pandora hastened to replace the lid! but, alas! the whole contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only excepted, which lay at the bottom, and that was HOPE. So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope never entirely leaves us; and while we have THAT, no amount of other ills can make us completely wretched.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks, and it seems likely to continue to be so for quite some time. There are many real and terrible consequences of the mistake that America made in November, and ignoring them will not make them go away. We’ll all need to find a way to do our part.
It’s not just you — it’s legit hard to focus on work right now. This is especially true if, as many people in my community are, you are trying to motivate yourself to work on extracurricular, after-work projects that you used to find exciting, and instead find it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
I have no particular position of authority to advise you what to do about this situation, but I need to give a little pep talk to myself to get out of bed in the morning these days, so I figure I’d share my strategy with you. This is as much in the hope that I’ll follow it more closely myself as it is that it will be of use to you.
With that, here are some ideas.
It’s not over.
The feeling that nothing else is important any more, that everything must now be a life-or-death political struggle, is exhausting. Again, I don’t want to minimize the very real problems that are coming or the need to do something about them, but, life will go on. Remind yourself of that. If you were doing something important before, it’s still important. The rest of the world isn’t going away.
Make as much time for self-care as you need.
You’re not going to be of much use to anyone if you’re just a sobbing wreck all the time. Do whatever you can do to take care of yourself and don’t feel guilty about it. We’ll all do what we can, when we can.1
You need to put on your own oxygen mask first.
Make time, every day, for hope.
“You can stand anything for 10 seconds. Then you just start on a new 10 seconds.”
Every day, set aside some time — maybe 10 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe half the day, however much you can manage — where you’re going to just pretend everything is going to be OK.2
Once you’ve managed to securely fasten this self-deception in place, take the time to do the things you think are important. Of course, for my audience, “work on your cool open source code” is a safe bet for something you might want to do, but don’t make the mistake of always grimly setting your jaw and nose to the extracurricular grindstone; that would just be trading one set of world-weariness for another.
After convincing yourself that everything’s fine, spend time with your friends and family, make art, or heck, just enjoy a good movie. Don’t let the flavor of life turn to ash on your tongue.
Good night and good luck.
Thanks for reading. It’s going to be a long four years3; I wish you the best of luck living your life in the meanwhile.
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I should note that self-care includes just doing your work to financially support yourself. If you have a job that you don’t feel is meaningful but you need the wages to survive, that’s meaningful. It’s OK. Let yourself do it. Do a good job. Don’t get fired. ↩
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I know that there are people who are in desperate situations who can’t do this; if you’re an immigrant in illegal ICE or CBP detention, I’m (hopefully obviously) not talking to you. But, luckily, this is not yet the majority of the population. Most of us can, at least some of the time, afford to ignore the ongoing disaster. ↩
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Realistically, probably more like 20 months, once the Rs in congress realize that he’s completely destroyed their party’s credibility and get around to impeaching him for one of his numerous crimes. ↩