I don’t know what this is. Is this for someone? Who am I writing to exactly?

I guess those questions will get answered along the way. I suppose I don’t have many people left that would care to hear any of this from me so I’ll put it here.

I’ll need somewhere to dump this going forward. Somewhere to get the bullshit out, find the chaff and eliminate it over time. (i.e. this right here.)

Trump was re-elected Tuesday. I’ll just get that out of the way up top. I’m struggling with how much to write about it. Or think about it. Or read about it. Or worry about it. (I don’t know how I’d avoid the last one but maybe I’ll figure that out here too.)

I’m pretty much over all of it and feel powerless to affect change or even help those affected beyond cash payments. But I know the newspaperman’s son and lapsed political junkie in me can’t look away entirely. It will seep in. Or do I unplug fully and avoid everything but sports? I’d need some decent downtime strategies to avoid compulsively opening the Apple News app.

Beyond all the topline horrors (He was reelected by popular vote, he’s losing his mind rapidly, he feels uncaged and ready to strike and has surrounded himself with people ready to do just that), the overarching nausea I hadn’t remembered that I can’t shake is not my own fluctuating depression but everyone else’s. The pervasive gloom in most of the people I’ll interact with’s disposition. Worldwide funk on continuums of volume and urgency. Personally, a further retreat and growing acute misanthropy.

I’ve talked myself into a handful of strategies to cope over the next four years (and, fuck, who knows how much longer beyond): I’ll become a health nut and finally tackle my terrible diet. I’ll make that ebbing exercise regimen permanent. I’ll quit the news and just read books and longform pieces in the in-between moments. I’ll re-dedicate myself to songwriting, digging through the hundreds of riffs, chord changes, verses, and weird noises I’ve admonished myself to keep for the last 25+ years and finish song after song, my Spotify output staggering. I’ll dismantle the mountains of stuff in the basement, in my life, pulling it out of all the boxes and stacks, piling it all up in the middle, sorting and purging, becoming a minimalist, mindfully aware of my nothingness. I’ll turn E into the perfect trick dog, working off all her rough edges to become the perfect companion…nice to think about…I need to do something.

At the same time…
I have that familiar creeping compulsion to document the insanity…everything falling apart. The end of this miserable selfish species. Even if I’m only going to keep it to myself.