Parallel Projects While It's a Difficult to Work Day

Doodle of doom-scrolling.

Yes it's difficult to work on a day like today. Events in the news trigger emotions. To even write a broad brush summary is a bit triggering: yesterday's coup attempt, countless actively harmful statements and policy choices by 45th president, the year of pandemic and poor leadership and avoidable harm, the social unrest after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the abusive cruel response to the BLM movement which is asking for such a basic thing: please stop killing us.

Clearly we have lots of work to do to dismantle the systems doing this harm. We need to de-platform hate. We need to share power and opportunity with equality and fairness in heart, mind, and action. I feel cautiously optimistic that recent election outcomes mean we have a chance to get more work toward equality done.

Yet here I am, doom-scrolling. Seeing so much anger and pain and response to it all, it's a lot to take in. Hearing, seeing, feeling my own and others pain at injustice, I let it distract me. I feel it's reasonable to be distracted.

Someone asked in my feed if it's difficult for anyone else to work on a day like today. A day after the coup watching and wondering what our government's response will be. It's tense and distracting.

Then I remember how so many other amazing human beings of all colors of skin, beliefs, identities, and backgrounds have been dealing with oppression for so long and they keep moving. Keep doing the work. It's a reminder to me there's much to do.

This is some of the cycling I do going from small picture, big picture, and back.

Whether it's a good news day or bad news day, we have or immediate day to day lives with friends/families, jobs, responsibilities to relations in our near circles keep going. Also the bigger systemic needs work to continue. We need to recognize and show up with the choices we make in the wider circles, how we show up, who we include, how we spend money, vote, behave and care for one another who belong to other circles and relations. The system is made of people and policy through our choices.

I look at this like another life-role and like other life-roles things need to happen in parallel. When I'm working on my next game or workshop I'm still a husband, dad, friend, all kinds of goals. Sometimes this category of goal goes into a bucket I call "community". This year I'll try another grouping of goals called "active caring citizen". That label reminds me of being aware, involved, caring, to participate in voting, to evaluate what kinds of companies I serve and get service from.

Taking a moment to give space for my own emotions and try to remember the connections isn't easy or instant. That effortful remembering puts a picture in my mind that I'm working toward goals that include all kinds of things from fitness, family, finance, professional projects and active caring citizen. That connects the big picture and immediate and helps me get back to it, stop the doom scrolling, keep moving.