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Despondence and the Anthropocene

There are so many ways to start this initial blog post I’m not even sure where to begin. My husband is the great communicator of our pair and has so many blog posts ready to go. I have half drafts of multiple ideas started in my head for the positive things that normally swirl through my optimistic head. It’s unexpected to me personally, then, that it’s despondence that is the motivator to start.

It has been a real month. Between the horrors happening to children at the United States border, the erosion of faith in our democratic system, climate change, plastic in the oceans and the suicide of Anthony Bourdain triggering reports that suicide and depression has been up among Americans for well over a decade now because of rot in our culture, I am currently feeling like no amount of effort I make as an individual is going to make a dent in this mess. In response to all of that, I just had a really good sob into my bathrobe while wondering to myself if that is what a healthy person would do. I decided that it was and feel better for having done it and better for having just cried typing about it.

I suppose from there I have a couple of options (in no particular order other than the one that my brain is coming up with them):

1) Wallow.

I don’t know how much value this has a an option. Psychologically, it seems like it must be part of the healing process necessary to move forward. A quick search of “can wallowing be helpful” does indeed turn up a few articles on the subject. This one was very helpful. This one was also not too bad.

Ok, wallowing noted to keep in the toolbox. Also, it makes me think I should really look into the psychology helpline I pay for as part of my insurance instead of feeling that odd stigma of needing help working through what I believe is a rational response to the current state of the world. I’ll let you know how that goes.

2) Disconnect from the Source of Distress

There are a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head on this one. I’m sure watching the nightly news, too much consumption of social media in the form of Facebook and Twitter and feeling like my every action has to be a net positive one (along with the feelings of guilt when they are not net positive) are all piling on and helping with the despondence.

After Chris and I got married and we had decided we weren’t going to have kids, we wondered what to do with ourselves and our time. Getting involved with our community seemed like the obvious answer. So, we engaged with our local environmental organizations, our county level political party, the county chapter of the NAACP and Chris even became a leader in our HOA. Once there, we’ve found amazing people and connections to our community that I don’t think either of us realized were available to anyone willing to show up. Humans, apparently, get enjoyment out of engaging with each other and solving problems together! Who knew!

Lately, however, it feels like the only things we’re doing revolve around community organizing, activism, staying informed and interacting with other people in the same boat. We are at the point where we’re scheduling fun and relaxation and I’m not sure that’s entirely healthy or helpful.

In the last week no less than three people I have talked to have said to stop watching the news every night. All of the corruption and awful violations of our country’s norms will be there on Monday.

Do I have it within me to do what I see many coworkers and neighbors doing and just be as blissfully ignorant as they can be? I don’t think so, but I also don’t think being hyper-engaged is moving the needle as much as I would like. So, maybe Maddow doesn’t get watched this week, again.

A quick search of the interwebs pulls up many articles on activist fatigue and how to address it. I like this one, which talks about one person’s experience after Charlottesville, and this one, which has some good insight into activist group dynamics and tips.

3) Take Half Measures

For this one, what I think I’m trying to say is that just because an opportunity for an action comes up doesn’t mean I have to help organize or participate. I am allowed to make judgement calls on the best use of my time and energy and not organizing or participating doesn’t make me a traitor to others or what we’re trying to accomplish. On this one, I am very lucky in that Chris is very honest with himself and others about boundaries and what he is and is not willing to do.

4) Practice Self Care

This is more of a list that I think needs to be fleshed out and perhaps added to with future examples or a separate post (also, I’m getting bored of writing and think you may be getting bored of reading).

  • Recognize when you need a break
  • Exercise
  • Eat right
  • Make a point of putting your own oxygen mask on first.
  • Give yourself a break. Find something that is disconnected from the shit swirl, whether that’s gardening, dancing, vacationing, reading a romance novel, taking up guitar, playing Cards Against Humanity or whatever else you may need, but make time for that.

5) Share the Burden

If you’re burnt out, let others know. Actually, going back to 1, be honest with all of your emotions. You’re worth it. Also recognize that you aren’t cleaning up the whole ocean by yourself. You aren’t stopping 45 and his assembled team of the worst people in the U.S. and their enablers all by your lonesome. Tell people how much this means to you and tell them how they can help.

6) Celebrate victories and notice the progress, too.

Yes, it’s shitty out there. There have been worse times in history and people got through those. We’ve never gone through an anthropocene, but I can’t believe we’re actually going to let the human species go extinct so fossil fuel executives can all have yachts at the end of history.

Yes, there is plastic in every bite of seafood now. Yes, the corals are bleached perhaps beyond resuscitation. Yes, the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are part of boiling life alive across the globe.

On the positive side, shitheads like David Koch are reaching the end of their mortal coil and are not being replaced. Kids are realizing that they have the power to effect change and are actually doing it. Women are taking hold of the power we have let sit dormant for so long. There are reasons to be hopeful. Frankly, if we can beat the Nazis and make it into space, I am hopeful that we can do just about anything we set our collective minds to.

This may all be trite and repetitive, but I wrote this for me. If it was helpful for you, I am very glad. If it was not helpful for you, that’s ok, too.

Peace.

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Launch Post

Hello world. We’re Amanda and Chris and this is our blog.

We’ve known each other since 2008 and got married in 2012. We have a happy marriage, but do get stressed out at times. We’re middle-aged, and never had kids. We’re writing this blog as a bit of a personal catharsis and to chronicle our adventures together.

She’s a political science major with a minor in international relations and he’s an animation student turned web developer. We’ve both read up on science and politics and all that stuff most of our adult lives, which started close to 20 years ago now. About a year after we got married, we figured it was time to have kids or….not. At that point, we’d read enough science about the state of the environment and where we were headed as a globe. We considered the evidence and arrived at the conclusion that the state of things isn’t just far from perfect, it’s alarming. Given that there are friends and family whose kids call us aunt and uncle, we figured our time might be better placed in working with others to try to fix some of these problems, at least in our local area, which is Northern Virginia outside of Washington, D.C.. Kids or adoption might come later if it made sense, we thought at the time.

We started looking for groups and organizations that are acting to preserve the environment for future generations, because even back then the government wasn’t, at least not adequately. At first, we were armchair activists. We’d sign petitions, donate money and post articles about destruction of the natural world on Facebook. It was probably the articles showing the graphic horror of the whaling industry or the harmful effects of plastics in the oceans that lost us Facebook “friends”. Around the same time, we realized that we were decreasingly seeing our existing friends. It seemed like a natural result of their recreation time moving from bars to babies as most of them were having families and devoting their time to their wonderful children.

The moment we became volunteer community organizers in the climate movement was probably late June, 2016. We were asked to captain a bus to Richmond by organizers with Sierra Club, and Chesapeake Climate Action Network for a protest. We thought about it, realized that we had everything we needed to take it on, and said yes. After some initial trepidation, we managed to do a pretty decent job (we hope). We made phone calls to help fill up the bus and thought that every seat would be full. On July 23rd, 2016, the temperature was 99 degrees and an air quality warning was in effect. The bus left mostly full all the same and Loudoun County, Virginia showed up in Richmond and joined around 700 others to protest against two massive natural gas pipelines, toxic coal ash storage, and rising sea levels. We stopped traffic (with help from truly fantastic Richmond local law enforcement and first responders) and sent a message to the Governor of Virginia that we didn’t want a monopoly energy company running roughshod over Virginians. We both got overheated and varying degrees of sick, as did a lot of other people. But, we did it and every one of our passengers got home safe.

Over the subsequent years, we were asked to fill in as co-chairs of our local 350.org affiliate group, 350 Loudoun, which we did for roughly a year. We still remain extremely active in that group, as well as with Sierra Club, and CCAN. We started getting into local politics and joined our local Democratic Committee. We started meeting elected officials. We looked at local fossil fuel infrastructure projects and met with county Supervisors to try to bring research, and explain the problems with various projects like the Dominion Loudoun Compressor Station.

We did a lot of work on Peoples Climate March. On April 29th 2017, over 200,000 Americans protested in Washington for Climate, Jobs, and Justice. We were bus captains on that one, too, and brought 86 of them from Loudoun County on buses. Hopefully our other organizing efforts brought others as well.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, we both worked on the Democrats’ campaigns, even though we both voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Amanda was canvass captain in Ashburn and trained every canvasser covering 13,000 homes. Virginia went blue, but it was the only southern state that did. Waking up on Wednesday, November 9th, 2016 was a gut punch. At that point we knew that we would be ramping up our efforts and that we wouldn’t be alone. Amanda got a bullhorn for Christmas that year and we joined well over 550,000 in DC for the Womens’ March on January 21st, 2017. Loudoun County exploded with progressive energy the following year and, thankfully, Virginia went pretty hard left in 2017. Loudoun County is amazing and don’t forget it.

In Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th, 2017, white supremacists killed a teenager who was there protesting their white nationalism demonstration. We had tried to make the environment our primary focus until that point, and it still is, but we couldn’t sit by and watch white supremacists disenfranchised, intimidated and killed people in our State. We joined our local NAACP chapter shortly after and are hoping that we are proving helpful to their efforts (incidentally, your local NAACP chapter needs you, too. It is intimidating to join a new group, but if our experience is any indicator, you will meet some of the most lovely neighbors you might not have known you had.).

We find some interesting intersections between grassroots environmentalism and politics sometimes. In the late summer of 2017, we helped write and introduced a resolution calling on Governor Terry McAuliffe to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) at the Loudoun County Democratic Committee.

So now…. we still do organizing work for the environment. We still work with the Democrats and support candidates as we see fit and we’re thinking about what’s next. We’ve built a network of some absolutely incredible people in Virginia that inspire us every day. We’ve gotten a little bit thick skinned. We’re comfortable with disagreement and public speaking (although, both honing that skill, still!). We’ve been involved in Virginia’s fight against the ACP and MVP since mid-2016. If there are stories from that effort that are compelling, and don’t harm the effort against the pipelines, or the people involved, maybe this will turn out to be a place to share those.

We’ve learned over the years that people are powerful and can change the world, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. If our own thoughts, projects, and whatever else can help people do that, that would be great. We’re not perfect, and we don’t expect anyone else to be, but being perfect isn’t the point. To you dear reader, may your life be full of joy and electrifying purpose.

To close with a quote:
“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.”
-John F Kennedy