What the Hell Can You Do About It?

 As you know I find writing cathartic.  I really, really believe that the Written Inventory in our Fourth Step is important because it's a written inventory.  There's something about writing . . .  Our pens seem to know the way to carry the sleigh to Grandmother's house we go, Hey!  And it was important for me to quit trying to organize things in my head, in my thoughts.  That was the Daily Jumble.

I've been rattled the last few days about the state of our world.  This is something that is not really under my control.  Writing and some phone calls got me back on track, helping me to come to terms that the state of the world is not really under my control, that my personal circumstances are what IS under my control, and that my personal circumstances are really quite good.  It's a weird dichotomy - trying to think in ways that wish the best for everyone with the knowledge that I don't necessarily know what's best for everyone.  This leads me back to being grateful for my wonderful personal circumstances, those circumstances that aren't too bad.  Still . . . I feel guilty when I say: "Ah, whatever - I've got it good."  I would like to be grateful for the fact that I've got it good while doing what I can to make the circumstances good for everyone else, too.

I try to keep politics out of my recovery writing but here's some of the stuff I barfed out the last couple of days, scrubbed as clean as I can manage.

The year is shot to hell.  It is almost impossible to travel anywhere.  The chaos of our domestic political scene and the uncertainty of the upcoming election is weighing on me.  I'm beginning to get my mind around the idea that next year may be problematic as far as travel is concerned.  I don't see us coming out of this tailspin even if (insert politician name) loses, even if we have a vaccine because half of us won't take it.  We're pretty comfortable with violence and death given our acceptance with gun deaths and opioid deaths and drunk driving deaths and virus deaths.  Our collective consciousness takes it in stride.  Maybe it's just part of our makeup.  

A few days later:

I am feeling like our society, our whole world, is collapsing.  Consider (Insert politician name), (Insert important branch of our federal government), (Insert powerful judicial figure), (Insert dude at morning meeting who bugs the shit out of me) and (Insert another dude at morning meeting who bugs the shit out of me), more acreage has already burned in CA than in all of last year, Derecho destroys crops in IA, running completely through the alphabet for named hurricanes,  the terrifying totalitarian society in (insert popular drama) which we are now watching, the not implausible scenario of (insert another popular drama, not the same implausible one already mentioned, but they all start to blend together with their implausibility which doesn't seem so implausible anymore)  . . . 

Could our democracy collapse?  Could our financial system fall apart?  The flu is raging while a third of our population believes it's a political hoax.  Truth is debatable, facts are not necessarily facts, the media is the enemy, if you don't like something then it's simply not true.

I'm actually to the point where leaving the country for an extended period of time seems like a reasonable thing to do although no one wants us to visit at the moment.

I'd say 2020 is under assault as far as theater and museums are concerned.  I'd say foreign travel is no certainty.  That would be a two year flush.  Hard to stomach at 64.

What the hell can you do about it?