Scotch Tape anyone?

The past two to three weeks have really done a number on me. I am frustrated, enraged, sad, and frequently beside myself where I have to stop wherever I am and say out loud "what the fuck are we doing??" The denigration of public service, the undermining of our institutions, the cruelty for cruelty sake is really painful. And no one seems to care. I don't know how to deal other than to retreat into myself, which is the opposite of what I know to work. "Lean into community", but the way I experience this feels deeply personal and vulnerable and my community of public servants and educators are all feeling this in some kind of uncommon or new way. The discomfort is a new level of discomfort.

I think it's a combination of things. I have never in my life been this compassionate and empathetic an individual, due possibly to my relationships (my family with Jody and Linds, and others), my age, my gradual growing realization of what matters to me and that which is most important. I have also never been this strongly in possession of a perspective, of framing life and the world around me, of matching my values and my actions and having the path revealed to me about what is important and at the same time holding an outlook on life that is adaptable, flexible, and informed by compassion and empathy.

And at no time in my life have I felt so grievously enraged and hurt by the world going on around us. There have been bad instances of historic horseshit in my lifetime that I felt deeply affected by, the anti-Latino 90's in California, the criminal war mongering of the 2000's and anti-Muslim hate, and more. But this era, the past 6 years, has been a ramp of infuriation that has angled even higher in the past 6 months. I have never been this cynical and frustrated and sad and mad and everything. Maybe in the past this doesn't hit as hard but in the past I wasn't the same person. Before it would feel like I didn't have enough power to do something so it was up to me to circle my wagons and indulge in me and keep my goals short and achievable. Now, I feel like someone who has 200 people to hug and can only get my arms around 20. I can't grow bigger arms or more arms, and the number of people is climbing. I have to be good with the 20 I can get my arms around. How?

I am very tired. Rest would help.

"The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world."

Warsan Shire

Comments

The Biggest Hater

Some threads in the social media universe have been lambasting brown folk, women, the marginalized, liberals, anyone who isn't butthole licking the current administration and its proponents, as having some kind of moral defect for either showing some kind of glee at the harm upon their own that has been occurring, or for going about their lives investing in their own happiness which includes copious degrees of "...we'll see about that!" For starters, no one gets to say shit about me creating and taking joy on a daily basis from things that do no other any harm. Especially being a hater. My own version of this criticized behavior ain't got shit to do with any of their lives or livelihoods. You didn't show up on election day. Wipe your own kids asses and leave me alone. For a country that really REALLY makes hay out of white people (especially white men) saying "leave me alone!", it sure does like to bother the rest of us. Take your failure at winning...

Love, Creativity, Curiosity

I gotta put this down somewhere just so I can remember what matters when I can't hear myself. Why love, creativity, and curiosity matter the most to me and should matter more to us all. Love To be a part of, to draw from, to give to, and live with community. One, or a few, or many, but to live for each other, to foster connection, in recognition and celebration of our individual and collective humanity. To live in gratitude, and to express gratitude, for all we have and all that has been given to us, through all means. Creativity To experience, and seek to experience. And to express what that experience means to us, how it has affected us, changed us, supported us, and connects us to each other. To express this Curiosity To learn, to seek to learn, to develop and create new knowledge and come into understanding and possession of new thoughts, ideas, truths, facts, realities, and values. To teach, to foster curiosity, growth, and love of learning in others. To inform and seek to in...

Right Now and Tomorrow

I connect to the creative and those trying to make a difference, specific to a thread of humanity commonly on the side of ethnic, historic, racial, and economic justice. Self determination and agency, health and prosperity, opportunity and advancement. I look to my own family's history and see those pathways, but many don't have them, and the pathways are not strong. Strengthening them and making them more accessible is my cause in life. I've done this throughout my career, and these efforts are how I have most strongly practiced my values in life, in a variety of ways. I am most fortunate to have had this cause and path find me, and to have given myself to it in the grand scheme of things. But I feel a strong resonance to the creative community. I think all of us do in our own way, be it through fashion or music or more. I love and appreciate the arts and I see the arts in everything. The arts have given me a perspective, a vocabulary, a critical perspective on a great dea...

Cheesy Rat Blues

Search This Blog