sunday edition: the big dark

on acting from the outside, in.

In addition to *gesticulates wildly around* all the news this week, the sun will set before 5 pm in Seattle every day for the remainder of the year. It’s a season I’ve long referred to as “sad season” or “the big dark”, and it’s a singularly challenging component of a life I otherwise love very much in Seattle. 

It’s not so much the rain, which contrary to popular belief is actually not that much in terms of volume. Moreso, I struggle with the fact that you can go many days in a row without ever seeing the sun. Grey clouds hover close, claustrophobic, stealing any remnant of light. Energy dips, and mood along with it. 

It’s a state of existence that requires preparation, and endurance. It requires choosing to behave in a way that runs contrary to how you feel in order to accomplish a change in those feelings.

In other words: you have to somehow muster the discipline to do things that will help you feel good, even while you are actively feeling like shit.

That paradox is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, with bad feelings driving maladaptive behaviors that only worsen bad feelings, and so on and so forth, forever.

I know I already shared that I found myself reeling about the results of this week's elections. But as the initial shock of disappointment and stings of hopelessness have worn off, I’ve found myself both challenged and comforted by different perspectives of what we are supposed to do next. 

There are far more experienced folks who will analyze and diagnose what exactly happened this election, slicing and dicing data and demographics to identify who exactly failed who, and how. (It’s largely fair to say it’s the men, but it’s also white women, and joe rogan and the tradwives and the woo-woo health and wellness influencers, and so on). It’s certainly a failure to listen to voters and develop a campaign that offers anything new or inspirational).  

But I am not a political analyst or campaign strategist, and if you are anything like me while you might find this sort of dissection intellectually interesting it does not give me much to go on in the way of what I can personally do about it. If anything, consuming too much of this make me feel even more powerless, intellectualizing away any sense of individual responsibility or effectiveness. 

Bear with me here as I mix my metaphors. 

It is likely that the next four (plus?) years will be deeply challenging. The next few months perhaps more so in anxiety and anticipation. There will be the instinct to retreat. To block, to ignore, to withdraw. To believe that just because we may not be personally impacted, that things aren’t that bad. To numb and to medicate, just as there is when the seasonal depression hits on the 87th day of rain and darkness. It is also true that retreating into comfort and individualism is unlikely to bring about the world that I know I wish to live in – one that centers community and compassion and care for others. One that holds myself to a personal accountability to do more on account of others.

The first year I lived in Seattle, I struggled to get out of bed almost every day that winter. I lost my appetite, lost my interest in regular activities. I was irritable, I was isolated, I was intert. But day after day, I got up. I followed a routine. I said yes to things I didn’t want to go to, and was surprised when I had fun. I went on my little walks and I made my little dinners and by sheer brute force I made it through the winter, shocked to look around one day, eyes wide open on a random day in March to see that someone had turned the technicolor back on. 

I am not a political analyst or organizer, but I am a writer. I know this is a community of thoughtful, engaged people who are navigating how to be people in the world just as I am - how to live out our values, how to pursue our passions, and how to champion a better world for the generations to come. 

Winter is just beginning, literally and metaphorically. We cannot concede in advance. We cannot be so averse to pain and discomfort that any pain endured is intolerable and we just roll over rather than put up a fight. Building community is a muscle. It is radical.  Organizing is music –we must find a choir and start practicing. 

I am not quite at a place of roll up your sleeves optimism. But I do find myself arriving at a place of the same resigned determination with which I now face down each winter. It will not be fun. It will not be glamorous. It’s probable that I will regularly cry, regularly wish to return to sunshine and comfort. 

Perhaps, if enough of us join the chorus, it will not be a lonely journey. Perhaps, if enough of us take up the challenge, it will grow into something that cannot be overcome, like technicolor returning to a world that grew used to black and white. 

As I shared in thursday’s post, I put a pause on some scheduled content while I personally processed the election - I know many creators both did (and did not) do the same. I wanted to check in on how you’re feeling about what is helpful, useful, interesting, at this stage and moving forward. I’ve got a poll, or am happy to field comments or dms to hear directly.

A few snapshots of life, lately.