No Stupid Questions

Touching grass. It's important to remember that the entire world isn't online and the world isn't as dire as all of us chronically online doomers would have you believe. Things are chaotic-shift-in-the-status-quo bad, not civilization-ending bad.

The wheel turns, right now it's in a muddy rut and the people on the bottom (sexually active women, people of colors, and the queer community) are drowning, but all the little people on the outer edge are eventually in the dirt. Fuck the world, fuck the country, the people you have personal relationships with are the only thing that matters because all we have is each other.

Personally I have been trying to be more proactive, which has helped me have a sense of agency amidst the chaos. Everything I own fits in my car in case I need to leave quickly because of a climate disaster or the legalization of hunting trans people. I haven't bought a new thing (used, diy, or do without only) since lockdown because it's significantly cheaper and makes me feel like I'm doing my part to fight final form capitalism. I've also been exploring alternate ways to support myself and live that are more sustainable.

Jack Smith dropped the charges without prejudice so they can be re-filed the second he leaves office.

I have to provide for my family. they must survive because without them, I am nothing.

And nothing is more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose.

My friends, family, drawing, having a nice home to live in, good food and fun stuff to do ❤️ I try and avoid negativity by searching for things I'm interested in to engage with, such as art, nature photography, cat photos, and videogames. Some websites let you tailor your feed to your liking!

My dogs. I stagger their ages so that I'll always have at least one and thus would feel too guilty to ever kill myself.

I work in disability support. Some of the kids I am working with have gone over the last year from non speaking to using sign and are making real meaningful progress in their self care skills. They can keep going in the face of difficult times, so my problems don't seem so hard.

Also, in Australia we have the NDIS, a system for funding disability supports in a socialised manner without restricting what options someone uses too much. While all governmental systems (or any systems with money) are susceptible to grift progress is being made on catching fraudsters and prosecuting them while also closing the loopholes they exploit. The NDIS will be around for a long time to come and will help Australians with disabilities determine their own futures and make them a reality. There are problems with it but honestly it has been a game changer and I think it is a model for the rest of the world to aspire to.

I keep hoping that everything is exaggerated and it won't be that bad. That he'll be out in 4 years and not become a dictator with no more term limits.

Donald Trump will die (don’t care if from natural causes or not) at some point in the near future. Just want to be alive to celebrate.

I don't know what will happen. It is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for me, but that very same uncertainty is why I keep going.

There is this video that reminds me that there is no natural law that determines that things will only get better. Yet we have to find purpose. I am not hopeful, but I am happy for everyone that tries to do the right thing. We're in this together even if everything goes to shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJaE_BvLK6U

I'm sticking around to witness the collapse, in the hopes things go full mad max. Because that would be a better existence than the one I'm currently living in.

I'm not sure if I'm half joking or being entirely serious.

Prozac.

Personally, I turn to activism. I realized that regardless of how horrible the future will be, there's good to do in this world.

The world is full of people who are as scared as you and I are. I can make their lives a tad more positive.

The environment is collapsing? Educate and organise, think about how to build mutual aid systems and how to sustain yourself small scale.

The economy will crash? Help others, people who got thrown to the curb by the social system, homeless people, orphans,...

Civil rights are ending? I'm trans and scared. And there's so many other trans children that are counting on me to be the representation that I wish would have had when I was their age. I'm not going down without a fight.

Democracy is ending? Let's focus on preserving what we can and try to rebuild. It won't be over forever.

People being nice to and helping me often makes my day in an otherwise miserable time.I want to be that person for others.

Over the past few weeks, I realized that I wasn’t reading the news to “stay informed,” I was reading it because I was bored. As a form of entertainment, it’s pretty awful. 99% of what I read will have no direct impact on me or my family, and just sitting there and worrying about it without doing anything to fix it serves nobody.

Also, I’ve learned to be skeptical of basically every headline good or bad. I saw a headline this week about how upset Trump supporters were with his cabinet picks. Comments in the thread were talking about leopards eating faces. The article was a collection of 8 tweets from supporters showing disapproval.

This news site was just preying on people’s hopes and making a story out of absolutely nothing.

So I started focusing on some personal hobbies and have tried to re-teach myself how to focus by reading some long form fiction.

Easy. The world isn't ending. Ignore the doomers. Problem solved.

My partner and her cat

Oh I gave up like 15 years ago.

In general, humanity (at least in Europe?) developed positively over the past few centuries. There were of course setbacks, but they didn't last too long and sometimes even lead to great progress. Nevertheless we must fight for progress and shouldn't give up just because the world once again seems to get even worse. Even more important when it comes to problems we have just a tiny period of time to fight against like climate change, we need to act now and can't waste ten years being (ruled by) facists.

Antidepressants

Strike that. Reverse it.

My lack of motivation prevents me from ending it all.

My dog can’t feed herself. My family seems to like having me around.

Get off of social media. Other than here I really keep my news to computer stuff that interests me

That at any time I want, I can opt out.

I don't have to stay here and put up with the bullshit if I don't want to.

That's also a possibility where I could do something useful by taking someone else out with me, if I can manage to get it done.

You have no idea how freeing it is to be okay with death. When you cease fearing it and look at it as a welcome friend, everything changes.

Now it is important to realize that this is not a desire to die. It's simply accepting that death is inevitable, and that it is possible to choose when and how I die, if that's something that seems useful. Life isn't inherently sacred, there's no special glory in not dying, there's no particular benefit to sticking around other than more of the same that's already happened.

This means that every day is a choice. It's something I own. I have alternatives. We all do, but I'm aware of that fact in a way that makes even the truly horrible much less impressive.

Again, this is entirely different from wanting to off myself, it isn't depression. It's just the way I see things.

In these difficult times I find that all I need is spending some time with my loved ones, enjoying my old favorite media and games and sharing them with my daughter, and nightly cuddles from my beautiful monster of a cat while I read web serials to unwind.

Well, those things and also cannabis and escorts. And pizza. Keeps me going.

I have a teenage son - a wonderful kid who keeps me going.

Not sure what I'm going to do in my dead marriage after he moves out.

Study of history.

People have been prophesying the end times for millennia now, for this reason or that reason. I think that ultimately they just don't like the basic fact that change of some sort or another is inevitable in the world, it will not remain static and no system or institution will last forever. This does not result in any concrete end, however.

To quote Morpheus, "I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me."

There's also a fair bit of profit-driven exaggeration in just how bad things really are in certain arenas. Bad news makes good clickbait, good/neutral news less so. So the ratio of bad to good news we receive is not actually representative of the full picture of what is happening in the world.

Setting aside my depressive episodes and a few signals of impending doom, I look out my window and see a world that is still generally okay around me. That tells me I'm still in a position to go out and try to improve things.

For instance, my family and I got through COVID. To me, that's a kind of privilege, because I certainly know others who weren't so fortunate. So I'm doing my part to ensure another pandemic like that doesn't happen again, or at least isn't so impactful.