“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

There is a lot of malaise going around, and when I say “malaise” I basically mean being in funk so deep that you can’t start or finish anything. I am hearing this from the last people in the world I expected: people who are smart, creative, resourceful, self-motivated, self-disciplined, and buoyant, and if they are in a funk, what hope is there for the rest of us. Fortunately, that is not how hope works so here we go. Here is your pep talk.

Consider this: humans are biologically hardwired to fear change and you have been hit with a mortal degree of change unimagined a few months ago. Consider this: if you are not okay right now it is because powerful forces are hard at work making sure that you are not okay. They are rather, deliberately manufacturing the maximum amount of chaos, despair, division, and confusion possible. Under the circumstances, it would be weird not to go to pieces. Except consider [read more]