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The "easy" thing to do is retreat inwards. Regardless if you're organizing or not, now is the time to lean into friends and family. With love and support, we will always feel much safer to take the actions we need to.

I couldn't live with myself if I gave up completely. So I slow down, take breaks (burn out and get severely depressed) and then keep at whatever I can. These days all I have the power for is a rare protest or art event.

i took a firearm safety class and got my utah concealed permit and almost have my state permit.

i have done my best to stockpile food, medicine, ammunition, not for End Times but for disruption of services/mild chaos.

Working on getting a misgendered passport, as that's all that's allowed to me now.

joined a local communist org - not a very good one from what i hear, but one that accepted me and i'm working up the courage to go to another meeting. The last one i tried to attend was overflowing which made me happy but i couldn't bear standing awkwardly around the door with a little crowd.

working on saving up money to get out of this country while the borders are still open.

the news is super stressful so i have a private discord with some categories and i take the links and i archive them in these rooms. This sort of lets me acknowledge them and see the headlines but I don't feel the need to share them with my family or friends (which stresses them out). it weirdly tricks my brain into thinking that i have done SOMETHING though and lets me move on. Having been doing this for years now i also saw much of this coming (well climate stuff, the fascism curved quicker than i anticipated) which is why i have my modest little stockpiles.

Does any of this materially help the situation for anyone.. I dunno. It's how I been coping. I cry a bit too.

I could be lying to myself, but my solace is that by speaking the truth to my lib friends to prepare their minds for where we're headed, or far more often simply being kind to everyone i meet on the street or online is praxis.

If i can't help someone with words, just letting them know they're not alone in feeling crushed by the world is also my "praxis". I am confident I'm not gonna be the one to figure out what to do or even how to protect ourselves from this terminal capitalism, much less build community and socialism, but maybe someone i meet will.

Maybe someone they meet will, and my vain hope is a bit of brightness carried over could be that extra push that person needs at that time. Who knows what they'll do with it?

It's not like I'm doing much at all, i don't mean to seem like I'm doing a ton or anything, it's just a mentality i try to hold on to these days. A vibe i wanna spread in my own mind and to others.

It's also an excuse for me to avoid my own problems but i was gonna do that anyway lol

Yeah. So I have been feeling this so hard. Part of me wants to just always fuck it, leave the country and upend my life and watch from afar in safety. But another part of me feels guilty for abandoning everyone and everything. But also, what good am I from inside some camp... Idk.

I feel this so much. I am a huge baseball fan and I am excited to follow my favorite team, but even then I can't think to far in the future because like, will there even be a world series? And same with general life decisions - should we sign a lease on a new apartment, should we try to have a kid? Should I even be applying for better employment not knowing if I want to stay in this country in another year? And should I be spending time on any of this when our country is murdering people left right and center?

But you gotta focus on what makes your situation better, in the present, and what you gotta do to survive. Right now, all you can do is survive and stay abreast of enough news to know where things are going so when the time comes for stronger action, you can do it. So for now I am just focusing on one week at a time. You aren't going to be able to do anything right now to stop the terror by yourself, the only thing you can do is at least be plugged into a local org and be ready to act. No one expects you to work your ass off just to make ends meet and also fight tooth and nail against the system every single day.

You also should have an emergency plan (or multiple) ready, if you do need to leave the country.

You don't need to do everything every day - some days all you can do is go to work and come home to relax a little and do it again the next day. Preserving yourself is resistance, as long as you aren't giving into the reactionary thinking or just accepting the horrors - it doesn't seem to me like you have a conscience that would allow you to just accept it anyways.

Shit is fucking hard and it isn't going to get any easier. Some days my mental health is horrible, some nights I can't sleep because I am just spiraling about the direction of our country. It doesn't help that the media is gaslighting us into thinking all of this is normal, that genocide is acceptable, and it also doesn't help that liberal family and friends also don't get it or think it will be 4 tough years until we can elect Josh Shapiro or whatever. You just gotta stay strong, stay true to your morals, and try to get through the thick liberal and reactionary skulls that surround us.

• How do you live?

• I just keep going. I knew this was coming.

• You knew it was coming?

• Yeah. This or something like it. I always believed in it.

• Did you try to get ready for it?

• No. What would you do?

• I don’t know.

• People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.

• I guess not.

• Even if you knew what to do you wouldn't know what to do. You wouldn't know if you wanted to do it or not.

There is only so much you as an individual can do. We live in a society that is designed to make most of us completely dependent on an oligarchic class. Even in the imperial core the treats are drying up because the ruling class is scraping the sides of the peanut butter jar for profits. This is late stage capitalism.

Do what you can to ensure the safety of yourself and those you love.

Get involved in your community, build networks and rapport with people that can help solidify the environment around you. Get very local.

Beyond all that, survive. The people doing these things above all want to destroy anyone different.

Surviving and continuing to be yourself is one of the biggest "fuck you"s that you can hand to them.

Get involved in organizing. Even just little bits. Even just a reading group.