First, welcome to the new subscribers I picked up during the last Hubrisween event. Sorry for the seeming silence – when we’re not doing Movie Challenges, we only update once a week around here. An A-Z challenge like Hubrisween takes a lot out of you, and although I didn’t end up hating movies (as I have in the past with such things), it was also spectacularly easy to just not watch any for a week or so.
Then I got two gut punches in a row. One is personal, and I won’t bore you with it. The other is that last night’s Election didn’t go the way I thought it should.
So I’m going to be personal and topical tonight. Click away if you must; I totally understand. I hope to be back to my usual light-hearted shilly-shally sooner rather than later. But that is not where I am right now.
I didn’t watch the News last night, I only checked in occasionally on Google and Twitter. The only way I could keep my heart from freezing or exploding or both was listening to the Mike Oldfield channel on Pandora and re-reading Philip Jose Farmer’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, perhaps the ne plus ultra of escapist literature. There was a lot of deep breathing involved.
I checked into social media early this morning to confirm my worst suspicions. I did what I had to do on Facebook and Twitter for work, and then – following the advice of one very important series of Tweets, I proceeded to close the tabs for Facebook and Twitter. I had quite enough despair and rage and confusion of my own, though the little I did read at least confirmed I was not alone.
Then I followed the directions in that Tweet series I mentioned.
I had checked my blood sugars as usual that morning, but I was too dazed to write the result in my log. Whatever they were, they’re weren’t extraordinary enough to register.
I forced myself to eat breakfast so I could take my meds. Might as well, my ACA health insurance is probably going away, followed soon, no doubt, by myself.
I showered and flossed and brushed my teeth and shaved.
I put on clean clothes. I went to work.
This was important. This was to confirm to myself that Normal is still possible, still exists. Other people showed up for work and classes. Life goes on.
I took my long walk, trying to get my weight and triglycerides down.
There are a lot of people wearing black on campus today.
One of the other things the series suggested was, if you have a creative bent, do it as you are able. I’m a writer, so here I am writing. There’s some fiction I’ve let lie ignored for too long, I should get back on that horse, unhampered and untempted by those two closed-down tabs in my browser. Maybe try again to learn how to use Scrivener.
One of the other Tweet series I read before shutting it down was by an African-American, pointing out that if we felt betrayed, dismayed and that our interests and voices and well-being had been ignored and, in fact, actively torpedoed by powers apparently beyond our control – well, welcome to the club.
And that’s it, isn’t it? We’re all in that club, the Club of the Other now, and we have to redouble our efforts to look out for one another. Normal will still be possible, but it seems like it will be a debased Normal, and – barring a Twilight Zone-style plot twist – we’re going to have to struggle for it even harder.
Dan Rather used to end his newscasts with the word, “Courage,” for which he was mocked and derided. But that’s what we need now, isn’t it? Because it seems, in this horrorshow of a year, luck has largely abandoned us.
Movies will resume soon. I hope.
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drfreex.com 
Yup. Same boat here, more or less. I was up ’til too late chatting with a few friends online in assorted states of disrepair figuring out where they fit in a place they’ve been targeted in rallies as enemies for no other reason than place of birth or gender identity. My brain hopes the task ahead for incoming Fearless Leader sobers him up a tad, but his environmental pick popped that shiny bubble. Bug me if you need to chat. I’m going to be fighting for a few people I want and need to bounce stuff off of.
The county I live in and the neighboring county where I frequently work both came out strongly for Clinton. Most of the people I spoke to today had that same wounded but still-standing, tentative quality about them.
I am really tired of living in a Chinese curse. My times need to become far less interesting.