On Surviving An Impossible Age Together
An announcement, and a question.
I'm making this post as a sort of pre-announcement as well a check-in. I've been working for these past few weeks on a sort of framework for a new project to carry The Erin Endeavor through the rest of the election year and beyond. The focus is on helping us find, keep, and/or recover a sense of equilibrium, stability, and self in the face of the seemingly impossible challenges in front of us.
To put it bluntly, I'm finding it demoralizing to point out what's happening again and again without offering solutions or actions. As I said to my friend Sunny Moraine (@dynamicsymmetry), it's a particular type of nightmare to know what is happening and watch it unfolding and not be able to do anything about it.
I can't offer easy fixes for giant systemic problems that don't have them, but I can help with the smaller problems that get in the way of addressing the big ones. I can help take care of the people who might be part of the solution to a larger problem.
This is not about disconnecting from politics to focus on the self. It's about staying connected while staying grounded. I'll still offer news analysis and political commentary but there also be wellness check-ins, structured discussion threads, and some general cheerleading. Sometimes we'll share articles that offer helpful advice or calls for specific actions that we can do right now to help.
The ultimate goal is to defeat Trump, ideally with the most progressive candidate possible and ideally with a blue wave that sweeps both houses and even more ideally with so much force that the whole corrupt Republican Party is mortally wounded in the process. The key to that is voter turnout. But there are more than eight months between now and the election, and a lot of us are hanging by a thread.
My goal here is to put solid ground under our feet so that we can hit the ground running, so that we make it through the primary season and come out of it ready to fight in the general election, so we're ready for election day, and ready for what comes next.
I have my plans for this project, and they are fairly loose and open-ended because I think it will work best if we can be responsive to each other and events instead of following a pre-planned curriculum. So, as I said up top, this post is partly a check in. If anybody is feeling tired, demoralized, crushed, etc., or is having a hard time seeing the point, please feel free to weigh in in the comments. What is it you feel like is missing that would make things easier? What do you lack?
As a ground rule, this is not a place for arguing with people or debating them about their feelings and experiences. We're not here in this thread to find out facts but to feel out feelings. I'll take the answers into consideration as I move forward with my plans.
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Just want to make it clear to anyone who reads this and then decides not to comment because they're not sure their problems are worth discussing or that they've done enough to need support: that's not what we're about here, not at all.
My goal is to get as many people fired up and engaged and motivated for November as possible, not to decide who is worthy of that kind of support.
I'm an inveterate lurker, but this post has compelled me to join the conversation. I want to say thank you for everything you do - reading your email newsletters & twitter analyses has kept me informed so much better than I would be otherwise, and your care and concern for your community always shines through so clearly. Thank you for how you thoughtfully and deliberately continue to create this space.
What I personally struggle with the most is feeling burned out while simultaneously feeling very certain that I have in no way done anything even approaching sufficient justification for said burnout. My friends reassure me that feeling burned out is still valid, but internally, I feel like I need to be able to point to specific achievements or actions that add up to some unknown quantity that will satisfy myself that I am doing enough - and that it's ok to be tired. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like nothing is ever enough; how can those of us who spend our time on things outside activism ever feel like we've done enough? But when I talk to friends about this (and I recognise that this is both a stupid and excellent "problem" to have), they always respond with reassurance that what I'm doing is, in fact, enough. I guess I'm always looking for someone to agree with me that nothing is ever enough, and to affirm that, yes, I could be doing more, and probably *should* be doing more, to try to improve this fucked up world we have.
Anyway, thank you for giving me a place to express this - I guess it doesn't exactly fit your brief unless being affirmed that feeling bad for feeling burned out is correct counts as a thing I'm currently lacking? Hard to know if it would actually help but reassurance and affirmation don't seem to be working for me at the moment.