a little more juju

I am not going to lie and say I’ve felt much more than despair the past, oh, week or so. Finding the energy to do anything more than just to lie down and doomscroll through my limited number of social media feeds has proven to be pretty difficult. My house looks terrible, and my planned exercise regimen has been replaced by trying to convince myself to eat or … do anything remotely healthy, if I’m being completely honest with you. Creativity has also taken a back seat to this overwhelming feeling of … hopelessness is the best word for it.

Maybe it’s because I have this nagging – and accurate, if the past five days are any indication – sensation that things are just going to get worse, and there is little I, a singular individual in a very red state in an even more (somehow) red town, can do. I mean, I’ve got lawmakers in Tennessee that want to rename the Nashville International Airport to something after Trump*, and then Andy fucking Ogles put forth an argument that perhaps we can just see if Trump can get a third term. Noem and Hegseth were confirmed, something I both dreaded and assumed would happen, and ICE is terrorizing human beings like the fucking white-armored stormtroopers they are. Plus, I’ve got all the (understandably upset) people in blue states who have decided that they want to essentially abandon me and others to the fates of the right wingers that live right next door to me who have made life here a living, breathing hell.

But seriously, what am I supposed to do? I have no power here, no way to sway the minds of people who do, because I don’t have a) money that could convince them or b) influence in any kind of social capacity to where anyone would listen to me. The majority of the time, anything I write is barely read anywhere by anyone, so again, what am I supposed to do?

I loaded up the dogs and hopped in my car, headed to anywhere really. Not too far, because … gas, you know, but far enough away from other people so I could actually think. And I realized something as I stared at my two blissfully unaware doggos. My thinking is just another vestige of the indoctrination from my childhood: this individualist, “main character energy” bullshit that got us into this mess that I believe started even further back than our country’s founding. The same ignorance that libertarians operate on, that they don’t need a collective because they can do things themselves despite being reliant on a whole network of things that they take for granted or, more likely than not, are unaware of being in existence**.

Now, I’m limited in what I can do as both an individual and a progressive in a rural conservative town, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t others here like me. Back before the election, I passed by a lot of people with Harris/Walz signs in their front yards, and the Democratic Party office is just a few blocks away from my house (I actually just recently filled out the membership form for the Wilson County Democratic Women group). And while I don’t quite have a crew here yet, that doesn’t mean that I can’t already be the person I want to find in my community, one that cares about others and the direction the county (and country) is headed. I ordered a few flags online to display at my house to complement my Tibetan prayer flags that blow in the wind beautifully, and I’ll be building my own little curbside library by my mailbox. I’m even doing little things like trying to make my yard a habitable place for wildlife and helpful insects and the like (without inviting mosquitoes, which just kinda goes without saying because they’re terrible and do nothing but spread misery and disease).

While I may not necessarily be out of that above-mentioned despair, I’m making strides to get away from it. My home is going to be my little respite from the insanity that is coming our way over the next four (and probably more) years, and I’m going to try and surround myself with people with similar values and goals. I’ll still probably have really bad days where I’ll just want to sell everything I own and move to Canada or something, but for now, I know I’m making strides to make at least a portion of the nation a kind space.

* Back in 2023, some morons tried to pass a bill that would name part of the Rep. John Lewis Way in Nashville after the asshole, and that was pretty quickly squashed.

** I know this because, before I started going even further to the left as a late teen, I was leaning more libertarian and had to come to grips with how uninformed I was about how the world works.