Greetings from the front lines

I wish I’d kept track of how many journals I’ve tried to keep over the years, starting with that little white one in 1976 that I wrote in for about a week. Even then, I was paralyzed by what to write. Plus the lines were too small for my way-too-large letters.


There have likely been six others over the years, some lasting weeks, some lasting months. I could likely compile most of them into one document, but it would really not give much of a picture of a life that is really very poorly documented.


Juliana says, though, that I should journal as a part of my therapy, which I am paying a lot of money for for it to not work, so. Here we are with (maybe) number seven?


I’m not going to really worry about doing this every day. It’s overwhelming to put that kind of pressure on my poor ADHD-addled brain. But I will try—for the therapies—to write something, every once in a while.

The other problem is that we are eight days into Trump era number two, and this time we can’t say that we didn’t know how bad it would be. This time, we can’t say that he’s a businessman, that maybe we do need an injection of Washington outsiders, that maybe he is the antidote for politics that are frozen in place. That maybe he will get something done.

At this moment, I am horrified that he might get something done. Shaking in my boots at what that might be.

I’ve been activist-ing since September, when I started to completely fuh-reak out with worry that he might get elected again. I organized a postcard party, and we wrote a large stack pleading with people to do the right thing. And then I wrote letters for weeks, begging people to let their voice be counted. And as of last week, I am trained to give online classes in spotting and combatting disinformation on the Internet.

It’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. And I am so angry that I can’t breathe, and Juliana tells me that anger is a secondary emotion, and that it’s masking what I am really feeling and she’s right.

I’m sad. I’m scared. But those hurt too much. Anger isn’t all that productive, but it doesn’t hurt.

So.

But the kicker was that someone on Bluesky the other day said that historians would want first-hand accounts of this, if it goes really wrong. If it goes really wrong, and they have to write books about, you know, the fall of the Republic. And they encouraged people to write about it, what it is like ‘on the ground.’ How it feels to be going through this, in this time, right now.

Well, person from the future—

It’s fucking terrifying.