So one of my ongoing goals is to write 750 words a day on something, anything, as long as it’s not a tweet or a Facebook post.
This might be a challenge, as my creative sauce has been low for the past couple of years, and I fear my imagination-brain has shriveled to dried-pea size in the meantime. With the whole 1% inspiration-thing lacking, the 99% perspiration hasn’t been forthcoming, either.
No doubt I often wax inarticulate* on Facebook, and I’ve posted dribs and drabs on this blog or another, but most of whatever I have has been frittered away on Netflix and stuff-my-face and Amazon spending sprees into the wee hours of the evening. Idle hands are the Devil’s gateway into his real playground: the Internet-shopping-mall. I have enough clothes, and shoes, and baubles, and mp3s, and makeup to satisfy a small suburban middle school, but I don’t have what it takes to feed my soul.
Why is that? My husband would call it “laziness,” but I might call it “depression brought on by complacency”, an inertia which allows me to resist the restless call of my spirit to the creative endeavor. Even when I do answer the call, I get lost in the woods before I ever find the path. I read something inspiring, I pull out my colored pencils, I find a notebook, I pull up one of my four blogs, and then…ptttht.
It’s both frightening and fascinating to me that the thing I think just might pull me out of this tar pit of banality is the fear that the despair brought on by the incoming government might just kill me. And I’m relatively safe, being white, middle class, educated, employed in a career with less ageism and sexism than most (even really ancient** women like me can still teach), middle aged, and unable to bear children. I don’t know what it’s like to be a person of color, or a transperson, or a person with a disability. I have my intersectional challenges, but it’s been a long time since I’ve faced any overt discrimination, or have had to fight or fear for my life. I’m not living with a target painted on the back of my hoodie, that’s for sure.
Still, I work with children. Children who are mostly from immigrant families. Families who live in fear because of the vile, hate-mongering, lying, sexist, bigot, fascist, orange overlord-wannabe that nearly half of our country voted for. Most Trump voters didn’t have to look into the eyes of a terrified child on November 9; a child afraid that his family would be torn apart, or that she would be treated like an enemy because of her religion, or like “less than” because she is female. My colleagues and I, however, did. We had to assure these children, with matching tears in our eyes, that we would do all we could to protect them, to fight for their dreams, to fight for justice, and stay strong…together.
So here I am, rambling on. I have met many others of like mind in the last two months, mostly women, but not all, with powerful minds, brazen hearts, and unquenchable determination. They have helped me realize that I can’t stay in my hole, hiding, and let destruction rain down on this country, (or break it apart from within, as the case might be.) Some people I know*** say it won’t be that bad, but I disagree, and I’d rather take my feelings and whip them into a frenzy for justice than “wait and see” if it can finally break me.
At the political action meeting I went to last night, someone mentioned that, as activists, we need to find what we’re good at, and do it. I suck at making phone calls. I have a terrible phobia, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it. I mean, if I can’t call my own mother more than 5 times a year, I doubt I can call 500 lawmakers. However, I can write, and I can speak in public, and I can march, and I can sing protest songs, and I can support causes with my bank account, and I can educate myself and I can fight. I will fight, and if you need me to, I will fight alongside you.
*thank you, Mike Hoefner, for the most useful phrase.
**according to my students. I assure them the only reason I have gray hairs is because they give them to me.
*** And by “people” I mean the guy who is snoring next to me right now.
Writer * Educator * Artist * Adventurer 