How to get to tomorrow
This week’s question comes to us anonymously:
How can we stay positive about the future these days?
I cannot get excited about the future. It’s too vague a term, and filled with too much uncertainty. There be dragons. But I can tell you a story.
I grew up in Philadelphia where winters get cold. When I was a kid, my father was a construction worker, which means he got laid off as soon as the ground froze, and went back to work as soon as it thawed. Which is a long way to say that money was tight. This was also back when the heating oil truck would make neighborhood runs, and fill the oil heaters in everybody’s basement. For us, that heater fill-up had to last the winter. So every year, my dad would get laid off, head to the hardware store, and pick up a giant sheet of plastic and a roll of tape. He’d then yell at us to get the fuck out of the living room, (I refuse to make him a hero in any story. Even this one.) pull the couch away from the window, and tape a giant sheet of plastic over the window. Afterwards, he’d go looking for my mother’s hair dryer to heat the plastic up, until it was good and taut like a drum. (I know some of you are nodding along right now. I see you.) He’d then hang a piece of plastic over both doorways into the living room.
Afterwards, he turned off every heater in the house except the one in the living room, which was now sealed off. My father (who is still not the hero of this story) knew we couldn’t afford to heat the entire house. So during the winter, we heated what we could. And during those winter months, if you needed heat, you came to the living room. Not him though, he disappeared every night after dinner. (I told you he wasn’t the hero of this story.)
Sometimes you cannot heat the whole house. The heat rises, it spirals. It escapes through every crack.
Sometimes you cannot be positive about the future.
But what if we redefined what we had to heat? What if we redefined the future to something we could actually manage. Because the future is too vague a term, and filled with too much uncertainty.
What if we could be positive about tomorrow?
Every night, as I’m going to bed, I go over a mental list of what I’m looking forward to the next day. It can be anything. It can be big. It can be small. Tomorrow I’m going to the record store. Tomorrow I’m going to my art studio. Tomorrow I’m making dinner for the family. Tomorrow I’m organizing my tool chest. Tomorrow I’m going to eat cereal and watch cartoons in the morning. Tomorrow I’m gonna walk around until I find someone to give $10 to. Tomorrow I’m going to check in with my neighbors and see if they need my help. Tomorrow I’m going to the protest. Tomorrow I’m making 5 calls to elected officials. Tomorrow I’m getting a donut. Anything that gets you excited about getting up in the morning. And because these things are all locked in for tomorrow they’re locked into a time that is not right now. Which means I can go the fuck to sleep.
Tomorrow is more manageable than the future. It’s the future, sealed up to a unit that you can better control.
When you can’t heat the whole house, you pick one room and you pack everyone in it.
It’s also very important that your list of what you’re going to accomplish tomorrow is achievable. I know that you want to, but you are not going to save democracy tomorrow. I know that you want to, but you are not going to stymie fascism’s rise tomorrow. Your list might, hopefully, contain some actions that eventually snowball into those things happening, but the list should reflect the step you are personally taking to help get there. (Tomorrow I will talk to five people about the effectiveness of general strikes.) Not the collective outcome. Your list is manageable. Your list is doable.
It’s so easy to spiral out about the future, because there’s a lot to spiral out about. And lest you think I’m telling you to bury your head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening, let me reassure you that I am most definitely not. I am telling you to do all you can. And also to be realistic about what you can do.
Spiraling into hopelessness helps no one. Giving an unhoused person $20 and a winter jacket that’s been sitting in the back of your closet might only help one person, but it also helps one person. When the systemic issues feel too big, we do what we can. When we cannot heat the whole house, we heat the core.
Earlier this week this was a small dust-up on Bluesky. Someone posted a photo of their cat. Someone replied with some version of “How dare you post a photo of a cat in these times?” I’m not linking to it, because I have no interest in further dragging “how dare you guy,” who most definitely got dragged by lots of replies telling him to ease the fuck up. And while I am 100% behind the person who posted a delightful photo of their cat, I’m also not completely unsympathetic to the reply guy who was spiraling about the future. There’s a lot to spiral about. But when we spiral, our shit gets everywhere. Before social media, those closest to us bore the brunt of our spiraling. Social media, which was a mistake, has made it possible for our spiraling to reach a random person trying to get through their day by posting a photo of their cat, which is unfortunate.
I would like to sit down with reply guy and ask him what he’s looking forward to tomorrow, but he’d probably call me a cuck.
On Wednesday nights, my tomorrow list includes that I’m looking forward to writing a newsletter. And look, I’ll be honest with you, sometimes the “looking forward” part is hard. Especially in these times. (I see you, reply guy!) But I sit here and I do it because the cost of not doing it is that I begin to spiral. I get a bit unmoored. I get anxious. It might be more honest to say that I look forward to having written it than writing it. Because this is a thing I can do. This is proof of life. This is an afternoon a week that I spend worrying about how words flow together, and not what my cell in El Salvador will look like. This is an afternoon I spend wondering if I’ve made a point clearly enough that it makes sense to an audience, and not an afternoon I spend wondering what I would do if ICE came knocking on my neighbor’s door. There is little I can do about those things until the moment comes to act. And when that moment comes, I will hopefully look out for my neighbors in the same way that I hope they would look out for me.
And until that moment comes, I will be working off a list of things I want to accomplish tomorrow. Some of the items on that list will be for my own mental health, some of them will be for the health of my family, some of them will be for the health of my community, and some of them will be bigger picture items that we’ll all need to put on our lists for the same day. (The day will come when we all have “general strike” on our tomorrow list.) But some days my list will also include posting a photo of my pet, or looking at photos of other people’s pets. Because joy is important.
Nothing threatens them more than our joy. Post your cat photos. Post your dog photos. Post any and all evidence that we are still here. Still capable of joy. Still capable of loving each other. Still looking out for one other. Still loudly ourselves. Unbowed.
Let our joy spark a revolution.
Maybe it’ll happen tomorrow. Or maybe the tomorrow after tomorrow. If we string enough tomorrows together we’ll get somewhere. And if we don’t? I’m still going to make every fucking one of those tomorrows mean something.
I hope you do too.
🖐️ Got a question? Ask it! I’ll answer if I can.
📕 Here’s a stupid notebook you can buy.
📣 My next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is May 8 & 9. If you are currently interviewing for a job, this workshop will help you.
🖤 RIP David Thomas
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