call to action
you're feeling this way, and I care about you, so what can I do?
first off
On Election Day last November, I doomscrolled late into the night. Nothing I saw shocked me, or moved me in any sense, really — it was a quiet numbness driving me to scroll until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. I’m a biracial (half my family is from a “shithole” country, per the president), autistic, queer, and trans person, which means I know the country I live in. This outcome was not unexpected. The next morning, I woke up and went directly to my car dealership because my dashboard had been up to something weird the night before. I figured if I didn’t do something, I’d just spend the day doomscrolling even more. If my body was going to refuse to let me feel anything, I might as well use that and take care of some unpleasant tasks.
Just before I left, I posted the following to Bluesky:
thinking about how I don’t want my friends (or anyone) to assume that a public sentiment of “everyone’s doing bad” means they don’t deserve individual space to talk about their own stuff without feeling like they have to tack on “but everyone’s feeling that way haha so”
This past week or so has been very personally challenging, to say the least. But as I’ve weighed whether or not to reach out to friends — or even as I do reach out to friends and apologize for, in a sense, having problems of my own — I try to keep this message in mind. It doesn’t sit right with me for my friends to delegitimize their feelings by only viewing their personal struggles in terms of but everyone’s feeling like that haha so. I go, yes, but you’re feeling this way, and I care about you, so what can I do?
Really! Tell me about your bad day at work, even if your job or your livelihood aren’t in the line of fire. Tell me about the inconvenience of your sprained ankle, how you can’t wrap your ACE bandage comfortably, how no medicine quite makes a dent in the pain, even if you’re able to pay for your medical care. Tell me about your frustrations, your worries, your panic attacks, how you just can’t get out of bed this morning because you’re in the midst of a depressive episode.
Staying informed and aware is important. But reading and reposting everything you see online won’t necessarily make you feel better or help others feel better (or even more informed). Texting a friend to vent, though, might help you, help them, get through the next hour, day, week. Everyone’s feeling like that shouldn’t be the end of a conversation, but a call to action. Give yourself the grace to heed it, and I’ll do my best, too.
to the letter
(this is the recurring section of this newsletter where I talk about what I’ve learned from my project where I’m writing a letter to a different person every day)
I wrote my most recent letter to someone I went to high school with, but who I’m not sure I ever spoke to. I’ve realized this will have to happen sometimes: as I wrote a couple weeks ago, I’m not convinced I know 365 people to whom I can write a thoughtful letter. But because this project is, ostensibly, a personal writing project, I can always turn a letter that’s written “to” someone else toward me instead. I’m reluctant to say — although I already have — that I’m using people as writing prompts, because that’s not necessarily true. But I can use the letter to reflect on why I chose to write to them, even if we’ve never spoken. Sure, we don’t know each other, but what stuck out about them after all these years, and what does that say about me? After a paragraph or two, the letter (still “to” them) becomes less about the person and more about me. I suppose this isn’t that structurally dissimilar to a letter I’d write with the intention of sending: I’d briefly reply to the letter I received, then turn the lens toward me and update the person about my life. Of course, in one case the person is ostensibly expecting a response, and in the other they don’t know I’m thinking of them at all. But that’s the project, isn’t it? (Will this be my conclusion every week? God, maybe.)
wholesome scroll
After about a year and a half without posting to it (but still lurking), I finally deleted my Twitter account this week. Here is a very short selection of my bookmarked posts I screenshotted to save for all eternity:
