going into 2025

I don't remember the last time I went into a new year with as much unease as I have going into 2025. Most of it is political: I am still trying to wrap my head around another 4 years under Tr*mp. When his first term was set, many of us said, 'It can't be as bad as we fear.' But it was. And it was worse. In the years during the Biden presidency we saw this failed egomaniac doing everything in his power to draw as much attention to himself as he possibly could. All through the campaign I bit my lip. I worried like crazy. When Biden dropped out and Harris took the helm I dared to feel hope. But when the Worst Possible News dropped in November, I let everything fall to the floor. All the hopes of a presidency under the leadership of a smart, funny and extremely talented woman of color: dropped. All the thoughts of wrongs being righted, of justice coming due, of stemming the tide of climate change, of restoring faith in the badly eroded departments of government (largely due to Tr*mp and his surrogates) - all of it dropped. But the other things that dropped surprised me. I stopped worrying. I mean, the worst news happened. My fear and dread actually dropped. My habit of vigilantly checking headlines and news sources, hanging on every progressive pundits' words and wringing every bit of nuance and substance I could out of every tea leaf being read: that dissolved. To be honest, seeing all of the plates crazily spinning above my head come crashing down was actually a sort of relief. All the constant attention I was paying, all the clenching of all of my hope muscles: it was exhausting. And I realized I hadn't been exercising hope. I had been exercising magical thinking. As if staying as focused and outraged as I was would somehow effect the result of the election. It reminded me of two things. First, it reminded me of the kinds of desperate prayers I would throw up into the sky when I was a young, naive, zealous fundamentalist Christian. I tried so hard back then to pray meekly and humbly. But I was constantly afraid that this invisible, mostly angry Sky Being would either simply not hear my prayer or deny it. And if my fervent prayers didn't get results, it was all on me because I didn't have enough faith. This level of 'hope' I was exercising felt like this. The thought that I could change the course of the universe by repeating and ruminating on specific thoughts. In the end it didn't matter if I was aiming these specific thoughts at a Divine Being or an empty shoebox: the outcome was the same. I did not change the course of history by hoping against hope that the smarter, more qualified person would win. Neither did I change my sexual orientation by begging Angry Jehovah to make me not gay. The other scenario this level of constant 'hope against hope' reminded me of was how I used to hold my body and mind while flying. (In an airplane.) I used to be terrified of flying. I never understood the physics of flight, and this translated into 'this can't possibly be really working' and I would clench my butt cheeks and abs all the way through the flight as if relaxing them would make the plane realize it was defying gravity. A friend of mine took me up in his 2-prop plane about 20 years ago, and that made a huge difference. Watching Russell operate the controls, and feeling the plane lift and fly not through some force of magic but by physics I could feel - that made the difference to me. I also began to see the statistics of the safety of flight. As many have said it is more dangerous driving to the airport than it is flying to another city. So I unclenched my butt cheeks and abs after the spinning plates came crashing down with all that reality. All that 'hope' had done nothing but make me anxious. And sore.
I do want to say that there is a difference between actual hope, and envisioning positive, creative outcomes in life. I feel my life is successful largely because I have believed I can and will live a successful life - white cis male privilege notwithstanding. When I face a problem in my life, my creative brain gets to work and starts to see solutions and a way through. I appreciate that about my mind and approach, and my life works as a result. But what I'd been doing with all this clenching and obsessively checking polls and reading blogs and voraciously watching video feeds wasn't hope. It wasn't looking for a creative outcome. It was fear, masked with a desperate thought that I could keep the entire business up in the air simply by force of will. Force of will is not hope. It's illusion of control.
During Tr*mp's first term I constantly came back to the realization again and again that I couldn't change lawmakers' actions, words or minds by obsessing over how wrong it all felt to me. It was so tempting to stay hyper focused on every repugnant thing Tr*mp and his cronies were saying and doing. But it only made me furious and worried, and disconnected me from focusing on the only place where I do have a say over things: my own mind, my own words, my own actions. I began to see that when I focused on my own sphere of influence, my day-to-day life worked. So I began to remind myself daily, even hourly, to let go of things I could not control, and to focus on the things I could manage, and to be as aware as possible of the difference between the two. Which is the serenity prayer, rephrased. This is my current mantra: fix the broken I can fix, and don't worry about the broken I can't. Be present, aware and awake to the moments unfolding in the life right in front of my eyes. Don't focus on the things unfolding in Washington DC, or the next insanely inhuman things Musk or Tr*mp or any of the Deplorable Basket Brigade say. While at first this felt like giving up to me, or throwing in the towel, it's actually quite the opposite. As long as I stay frozen in dread and indignation, I cannot act out of intelligence or compassion. To use another airline metaphor, I must put my own oxygen mask of first before I try to help others with theirs. When I am centered and focused, I can be. I can do. When I am uncentered and unfocused, all I can do is spin in circles. There is much I can do in my circle of influence - mostly my mind, words and actions, but also in the ways I can bring music, connection, laughter and light to those around me. And yes: fuck Tr*mp. I will never accept that he is anything like the new normal, or anything other than a malignant, destructive force.
And fuck Zuckerberg. Tonight I deleted my Instagram and Facebook accounts. The new terms of service gave over incredibly wide swaths of rights over content, and indicated ominously that Meta had the right to use anyone's words, likeness or art to train AI. Facebook had been becoming more and more of a porta potty balanced on a minefield. I had been spending as much time avoiding/deleting/blocking unwanted content, ads and profiles thrust into my face as I was posting or interacting with people. To top it all off, an article in the Rolling Stone announced that Meta was planning on flooding Facebook and Instgram with AI 'users' who would eventually have their own accounts. Facebook may have begun as a way for people to connect across the miles and years. But it has devolved into a system that pushes out obscene amounts of disinformation, one whose sole objective is to keep people as engaged as possible, no matter how much that might cost them. I began to see it less and less like a group of friends having a conversation and more and more like people sitting, dead-eyed, in front of one-armed bandits, pumping all their spare time into it, pulling the handle again and again and again hoping for a dopamine hit in the form of a 'like.' I began to feel like the proverbially boiled frog, sitting in a pot that was becoming increasingly more and more uncomfortable. (I have read recently that the whole 'a frog will boil to death in a pot of slowing warming water because it acclimates to the temperature by each increase degree' trope is a lie. That frogs, at one point, say, 'Hey, this is way to hot' and hop out of the pot. I am that frog.) When I announced that I was leaving the platform I was at first surprised at the amount of resistance I got from a lot of people. 'It's not that bad!' was one thing I heard a lot and 'Nothing has changed' or 'The terms of service have always been bad' or 'You get out of it what you put into it.' But, I truly think it is a system designed to make people think they are not truly connected unless they are constantly engaging. I have felt that tug myself. A lot. Countless  times I would find myself impulsively, subconsciously checking my phone, updating responses, or simply scrolling. Always scrolling. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. With precious little payoff. That is what Meta is banking on: people engaged 24/7. On Facebook, we are not the clients, the customers, the visitors or even the users. On Facebook, WE are the product. We are our own worst nightmares on social media. It brings out many of our worst impulses, emboldened by a platform that rarely expects and never demands us to act out of our best instincts.
Now. This all may sound like moral high grounding. And maybe a certain amount of it is. Maybe I'm painting as bleak a picture as I can to remind myself of why I left, and to not dive back into the fetid-but-familiar porta potty. And, I have been quite active on BlueSky, so maybe I've just traded heroin for methadone. But this I do know: life is not meant to be lived in isolation. Connecting online can never replace connecting in person. This company has worked tirelessly to make sure we are engaging with it more and more - and has baldly announced - even bragged - that it is going to populate itself with fake accounts. And the CEO of the company just gave a million dollars to Tr*mp. They are very publicly kissing his ring (which rhymes with 'puckered, flabby ass') So yeah. Fuck Zuckerberg.

But.

Hello to real life. Hello to being conscious, and being conscious of needing to be conscious. Hello to waking up as much as possible, and to making as much meaningful connection with people as I can. I am grateful I have such a great medium through which to do that, and that I am privileged to be able to do so in so many different incredibly vibrant situations. My work with seniors is a daily bounty of meaningful connection, vibrant music and enlivened hearts. My work as music director of East Shore Unitarian Church is an ever-unfolding blessing, one I am continually grateful for. Who knew I would become such an advocate for church life at this point in my life?

Here is a vintage pic of plate spinning, for those to whom the reference is lost. If you don't keep the plates spinning, they come crashing down.

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The East Shore Mighty Choir!

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Nurse Deb, Jack and me