Feeling Lost in a Chaotic Timeline

Once again, going to discuss some world events here. I try not to get into political stuff too much, but in the current climate I'm afraid its unavoidable. Here's the thing, if you are in the U.S. and paid any attention to news, even just casually for the past 48 hours you'd realize the last few days was a LOT. Plane crashes, mass government firings, Elon Musk trying to access our Treasury department. Its a lot to take in and no matter which side you are on, this has to be troubling or disconcerting at the least.

Some of my friends yesterday were having full on panic attacks. I won't lie, I'm worried and even pretty scared. I did a blog last week on a similar topic but it already feels like that was about three lifetimes ago. I see people asking what can we do. I don't have any concrete solutions on a large scale.

I will emphasize what I said before. Community right now is extremely important. It doesn't have to be political. Just connecting with those in your area you can check on and who will check on you. I know we are doing some events with our local Swiftie group in the coming weeks and believe me, we need it. Here are some other things you can do.

Create and Share Art

This may sound hollow, but during times like this art and expression is the most important. Plus it has been proven creating art is healthy and therapeutic for the mind and body. It doesn't have to be drawing or painting. It could be writing a poem or haiku, journaling, doing some crazy splatter art throwing paint up against a canvas or music. Just create and share others creations. Art is and always has been subversive, if it wasn't they wouldn't be banning books and media.

Amplify Voices

Whatever you create and share is great. Its also important to amplify art by those who are marginalized and the most vulnerable right now. Check on them. You see their art on social media and boost that shit. Make them heard and help them get their truth out there. Every share and like helps and getting them out there lets the world know we all stand in solidarity.

Collect Physical Media

This connects with the art point. Art is important and because I'm an artist, I spend a lot of time on this. Streaming is great, I stream a lot and have a lot of streaming services. However, in this age of streaming companies and studios taking things down and archiving them so as not to piss off the administration, owning physical copies of books and movies has never been more important.

Not only will you have a copy in hand that no one can take away, but you'll be directly supporting the creators. Streaming doesn't pay them much if anything at all. So, buying that CD, book or Blu Ray directly from an artist can make a world of difference to them so they can create more.

Check in on your Friends

This one can be hard as we are all going through our own shit, but just a quick text can really benefit someone's mental health knowing someone out there cares. We all need each other right now no matter how much the world wants us divided. It can be easy to isolate and shut down. I know I did this very thing for a few days a couple weeks ago before coming up with this blog. This blog quickly became my window to the world and my voice.

Here is a good article on how other countries have fought against fascism and were successful. Not one of my articles, just something I found doing my research and it gave me a lot of hope.

Hold on to Hope

The simple fact is, this overwhelming Blitzkrieg of awful news and Executive Orders and Elon Musk doing whatever the hell it is he's doing is meant to overwhelm us. It's meant to scare us and most of all, meant to make us feel hopeless and give up. They are banking on everyone throwing up their hands and giving up. The Democrat leaders have practically done that already. No one is coming to our rescue. There is no Captain America who will swoop in to punch Hitler. This is on us. But that isn't to scare anyone. We can do this. We have the greatest information highway at our disposal.

Be discerning when it comes to fake news. I've seen as much fake news about Trump and Musk coming from the left as I have the right. Things are terrible but we need to focus on what they are actually doing, not sensationalized memes or AI pictures of things that aren't happening. Fact check things for ourselves, because we know social media companies won't do it. This is why I made my own blog on a decentralized platform. No corporate overlord is over seeing my content. No one can ban me from this page or throttle my content based on links or keywords. It's been very freeing and reminds me of the internet of old. I highly encourage your own blog or stand alone website if you have the resources and patience to do one. There are a lot of sites to choose from. See my post as to why I don't recommend Substack.

Having your own site, be it Wordpress, or Wix or Ghost or whoever you choose you can post your own art freely, post your blogs freely and with proper use of keywords can be found in search engines without having to rely solely on social media platforms. Speaking of which, I recommend everyone getting off of X/Twitter as that is Musk's stomping ground. He owns it and runs it. I got off there a while ago because the site has become almost completely unusable.

Meta is harder to pull away from. I deleted mine for a few days but I have a lot of friends and family who are ONLY on Facebook. Plus our local community groups organize there, so I limited my usage there, but I'm still there. Bluesky is partially decentralized and I like it there a lot. They are not owned by a billionaire and have a women CEO who so far seems committed to keeping it an algorithm free and open platform.

These are all some things we can do to resist and start building resistance from the ground level. Taking power away from them one person at a time. It all feels like a lot and overwhelming, but there are more of us than there are them. We are the ones with the power. They just work here. I know that may sound like nice words, but its the truth. We just need to take our power back one person, one chink in their armor at a time. Find that thing you can do right now that brings you joy so you don't burn out and pace yourself. Those are all the things we can do to protect ourselves and our loves ones. Hang in there my friends and be safe.