#75 I don't know how to show up right now
But there are some things I'm doing, and other things I'm not
The past month has been a lot, as I’m certain it’s been for you.
I slept in my own bed 8 out of 35 days. I had two Christmases. I brought a boyfriend I liked home for the first time in 20-something years and everyone fell in love. I published an audio book. We celebrated my mother‘s 80th birthday on the Central Coast of California and then we celebrated my 46th birthday in the desert. We were in the desert when the fires started. I was convinced I had oral cancer which turned out to be a tooth infection which turned out to be nothing at all entirely but only after I took 40 penicillin.
I started writing every day and added 7,000 words to my manuscript. I started receiving bad news every day and added very many new gray hairs. This person had an accident, that person had to be hospitalized, a cancer scare for multiple, threats of evacuation and actual evacuations, homes lost and towns lost and dreams and histories and livelihoods and generational wealth lost. Too much to keep track of and too much to metabolize and too much to even remember who is having what kind of hard time.
The inauguration happened a little over a week ago, the day after my actual birthday, and that seems like a year ago given what has happened between then and now. I feel like I’m living in a snow globe that is being violently shaken, and I can’t settle into any kind of sense or dig into any kind of ground, which I am not expecting of myself anyway.
I don’t know what to read or what not to read. I don’t know what to say or what not to say. I don’t know if I should make plans for May, or next week, or if making plans is an act of denial, or if making plans is an act of resistance to those hell bent on denying us the ability to imagine a future. I don’t know whether to write about {THE SITUATION} or to write about {Dry January backlash!} or to write about {the new cannabis study?} or to write anything at all ever again. I don’t know whether to publish because I myself am finding so very many things being published hard to read, and I wonder if doing anything on the internet anymore is part of the solution or part of the problem.
I don’t know so many things.
There is this sense of urgency that I feel in response—like I have to figure it all out right now, like I have to know certain things or act in a specific kind of way, which is fucking insane because this is all fucking insane and we didn’t get the playbook for this specific kind of fucking insane.
I don’t know so many things. I don’t have to know so many things.
I don’t know how to show up. I don’t have to know how to show up.
I get to be where I am at, and I am giving myself grace in where I am at, and I hope that you’re giving yourself that same grace too right now because we all so desperately need that kind of grace, that kind of compassion, that kind of softness.
Below are some of the things I’m doing/thinking/navigating, with the major disclaimer that this is all in process, and that my current situation is stable and safe.
I would very much love to hear how you’re doing in the comments, or what you’re doing, or literally anything from you and about you.
With so much tenderness to you.
9 things I am doing (or not doing)
1. (Trying) to not expose myself to the reality show
Without consciously deciding to, I ended up avoiding the news for most of the first week of the project 2025 rollout—I did not watch the inauguration or read any of what I normally read, which is everything. It wasn’t that I was completely unaware of what was happening because that’s impossible, but I was, to an extent, out of it.
I say “without consciously deciding to” because I never made a decision to not read the news; it just happened slowly over the past month, probably as a combined response to over-consuming the news about the LA fires, and then not wanting to follow the transition of power. My mental health and anxiety levels were actually pretty great for most of last week because of this.
Then on Saturday night I opened the New York Times and clicked on the first article and spent less than two minutes reading it, and it completely fucking undid me. I was out of town staying with a friend in a hotel room, and I was so worked up from what I read that I didn’t sleep, soaked my sheets with sweat, and woke up to an anxiety so crushing it felt like the world was actually ending. I was terrified, ungrounded, and consumed by a kind of cold fear that took me about 48 hours and a shit ton of work to overcome. So, no to that.
I am not sure what my go forward plan is—almost every day for the past many years I have scoured the web for what’s happening in the world of drugs/booze/recovery/addiction and tangential categories, and what’s happening in the zeitgeist, because my job requires it. Changes in drug laws; RFK’s outlook on addiction treatment; cultural attitudes toward Dry January in the wake of the fires and inauguration—you get it. But I do know that I was not okay for two days because of two minutes, and that it took an extraordinary amount of effort to get my nervous system regulated and myself back to a baseline sanity, and that I cannot live that way, and that I will not live that way.
I don’t have answers, because I don’t think this is the time to have answers—I think this is the time to try and accept we don’t have answers yet and we might not for a while. But I do know that I’m taking this part seriously because I know I’ll be good for nothing if I’m drinking from the fire hose of their evil fucking chaos.
For now I’ve temporarily deactivated my Instagram (even though I don’t use it that much, I use it enough to distract me), unsubscribed from certain newsletters, stopped opening many of my newspapers/headline roundups, asked certain folks to not text or email me articles, and in general have become extremely thoughtful about what I read before I read it, or the state of mind I’m in and the state of my nervous system before I consume something.
I appreciated this article “How Much Do I Really Need to Know?” (thanks to a friend for sending). I’ve subscribed to Vox’s “The Logoff” (which is actually feeling like too much already) 1440 (which I like), which are both services that are meant to provide filtered/curated news events that are helpful to be aware of. This talk from Rebecca Solnit (thanks to the Boggs center newsletter, which is another good resource) was very helpful and reinforcing of the idea of being careful what we let into our precious minds and tender bodies.
I think my biggest thing around this point—my biggest takeaway for myself—is that there is a long game going on and this chaos is purposeful and temporary, meant to confuse and disorient us and ruin our nervous systems and scare us into submission, etc., and I’m asking myself What do I need to do to be here for that long game?
2. Narrowing my attention
I learned fast after the election that certain things I was obsessed with all the sudden became hard to digest, including certain points of view, schools of thought, and even some TV shows (like I could not get into House of Dragons, and we opted to not watch season 2 of Severance because it gave us “dark feelings inside”).
I’ve further found it really hard to read the multiple dozen Substacks I was subscribed to, not because they all aren’t great but because there are so many of them, and I feel obligated to read so many of them, and then my energy feels like it’s diffused or confused or insecure of itself.
I’m also currently in the thick of writing a book, and as I was reminded this weekend by a very smart author friend, I cannot write a book when I’m taking in a thousand different points of view constantly, or engaging with content that knocks me off center, or saying yes to the ever growing number of things that demand my attention.
All this to say, in addition to being cutthroat about what news I let in, I’m also being cutthroat about literally everything else.
I’m narrowing. I don’t know exactly what my narrowing is going to end up leaving on the cutting floor, but I know I’ve started a process, and that I’m taking my time and energy and attention seriously so that I can actually give deeply to the things that I care about, and the things that I can actually impact.
I have been very inspired by my pal Cody Cook-Parrot’s example, and recommend their newsletter and offerings for reclaiming attention. (I’ve also worked with them 1:1 and recommend that as well if you are able to.)
3. Choosing to act sanely so as to help other people act sanely
On Sunday, while driving, I didn’t realize I had to merge (a two-lane road became one), and before I could signal, the guy behind me honked, assuming I was being a dick and trying to cut in front of him. My first reaction in situations like this is always a middle finger (I’m the actual worst here), but at that moment I was listening to Pema Chödrön, and had just heard her say something about how we have the choice to encourage sanity or insanity—that we are tiny microcosms of the total world, and what we do in our daily lives ultimately shapes the world around us. (So if we want less aggression we should be less aggressive; if we want less war we should go to war less; if we want less negativity we should check our own; etc.)
So: Instead of making it all so much worse by doing what I normally do (rage) and then potentially sending him on his way with my rage plus his rage that he then takes out on someone else besides me and continues this chain of aggression, I actually cooled myself down and gave him a kind and apologetic wave. He shrugged sweetly, smiled and waved back, and then we went about our day.
It was a hard move in the moment—I’ve had my period for like a fucking month and essentially no hormones in my body and it’s winter and we’re living out the plot of multiple dystopian narratives—but it felt so good to get his little wave, and it was a really pertinent reminder of the actual impact I can have when I check myself and don’t unleash my own unmanaged pain on total strangers.
In the talk I shared above one of the speakers said we have to use our organizing to turn down the temperature—that we have to lower the stress and de-escalate the situation, not make it worse. In the Pema talk I was listening to, she says “It takes courage and it takes a world situation such as this to inspire this kind of work”. I think there is a way to see this moment as an opportunity to practice a lot of what so many of us preach. I know I want to be a person who provides refuge, not the person who causes others to seek refuge; I know I want to be the person that inspires calmness, and not the one that inspires chaos; I know I want to be the person that makes the pain less for those around me.
A lot of what I’ve just said in this point is acting as my north star right now. I think there is an idea that we have to do these kind of radical or visible or extreme things if we really want to help or be effective—that the world situation demands BIG MOVES—but I also think keeping our own sanity in order to inspire sanity in others, or keeping our own joy to inspire joy, or kindness to inspire kindness, is one of the most underutilized and under-appreciated tools that we have at our disposal.
Helpful Pema books on this topic: Bodhisattva Mind (talk/audio only), When Things Fall Apart, Becoming Bodhisattvas, Practicing Peace in Times of War, Wisdom of No Escape, Welcoming the Unwelcome
4. Accepting what is happening
One of the things my therapist consistently asks me is whether or not I can accept something I don’t want to be happening that is currently happening (for instance, if I’m having a really terrible/childish reaction to something in my life she’ll ask me if I can accept that I’m having a childish reaction to it, as well as the thing that is happening). I find that with a little bit of consideration I usually can accept whatever it is she’s asking me about—including the stuff I absolutely don’t want to be happening, that is happening.
This practice comes from ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and it serves to essentially reduce my resistance and thus my suffering, and allows me to stop spending my time wrestling with thoughts like “This can’t be happening” or “This shouldn’t be happening” or “I shouldn’t be reacting this way”, and to actually directly engage with what’s going on.
I am asking myself constantly right now if i can accept the reality of our given situation, if I can accept how I am showing up and how it’s impacting me.
I am finding I can accept it.
5. Taking care of my nervous system
I have pretty severe anxiety right now (especially upon waking) due to the converging factors of perimenopause, ADHD, and lol everything. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had major anxiety (I used to have agoraphobia and panic disorder before I stopped drinking) and I had forgotten how totally debilitating anxiety is and how much management it requires just for me to function. Here’s a list in no particular order of what I’ve found helpful.