I had another day sleeping too much and another day where my tummy isn’t right. I suspect those two things are correlated. I’m seeing my GI in a few weeks and I’ll ask him about it. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, I’m here to talk about the draft. No, that’s Arlo. I always confuse the two of us. I have to keep in mind that I’m the one attached to the fingers typing. I could stop writing right now and fulfilled my purpose of blogging, conveying what it’s like to be me. I won’t because I am here to talk about the election.
You don’t need me to tell you to vote. If you are reading this, I’m sure you know. Most of my friends have already voted. I’m certainly not here to tell you whom to vote for. Who to vote for? Who sounds right but it’s the object of the sentence so it should be whom. I’m going with that. That’s another thing that tells you about me, I believe my brain more than my gut. My gut is giving me problems now, that’s the first thing I wrote about. Why should I believe it?
Let’s try again and see if I can keep on track this time. I’m going to talk to you about the election the way my therapist talks to me about everything else. This election is a carrier of anxiety and if there’s one thing I know it’s dealing with anxiety. I’m not going to guarantee that your candidate is going to win, that would be lying. I tried that last election even though I knew better, I felt guilty about, and it came back to bite me. For the rest I’m going to assume that your candidate is mine, Biden, but this is just as true if you support Trump.
I see people torturing themselves and that tortures me. I’m feeling good about the election, 538 gives Biden an 89% chance of winning, that’s a lot better than the 70% chance that it gave Hillary. Looking at it the other way it’s clearer, Trump has only about ⅓ the chance of winning as he had in 2016. That doesn’t mean that you should take it for granted. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to vote if you haven’t already. What it means is that you shouldn’t fall down the rabbit hole of checking off all the terrible things that will happen if he’s re-elected. You shouldn’t be planning out what to do if Trump does one of the things you fear. Don’t do War Games figuring out how to act if Trump refuses to concede. None of those things will help. There are no preparations you can take that you couldn’t do after the election. If he refuses to step down you aren’t the one that’s going to handle it. You’ll be giving yourself pain for no gain. What you can do is work to make sure he doesn’t get elected. Make calls. Send texts. Help people vote. That’s a healthy way of dealing with the anxiety. You’ll be doing something useful.
Self-care is important and this is self-care. Don’t be afraid of enjoying yourself. Enjoying Halloween or music or a TV show doesn’t mean that you aren’t taking things seriously. It’s acknowledging that you are a person who deserves to be happy. Happiness is a virtue. Do what it takes to make yourself happy and to make other people happy.
Perhaps I was lucky and the unthinkable happened early in my political awareness, Nixon won in 68, he won in a landslide in 72, Reagan won in 80. Those were terrible. The twelve years of Republican Rule that started in 1981 set the country back in ways that we still haven’t righted. But there is a big difference between having major problems and living in a hellscape. I bet many of you have fond memories of those years. Don’t torture yourself. Ma Joad understood.
Wise Madness 