💾 Archived View for gemlog.blue › users › birchkoruk › 1731536660.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 19:34:50. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I cannot believe we are in the maelstrom again. It is mind blowing that so much of this country can be so fucking stupid and cruel. There are no words.
Back in 2021ish I was convinced we were on the slide into fascism, and then the 2022 election came along and things looked better. I was hopeful that I'd been overly pessimistic and we'd squeak by. Surely all us women will turn out to the polls to save our rights, at least? The margins might be thin but we'd ultimately prevail, right? "Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted." I guess I put too much faith in ... everything. Oh no, here we are. Oh no.
I am crushed.
The 2016 election wasn't emotional for me. But this one is a violation. And what can we do, legally speaking? Nothing. Just lay there and take it and hope it isn't as bad as we thought. But it'll still be bad enough to be a nightmare.
And aside from all the big picture horribleness, it is immediately devastating for spouse and I. Spouse works for an agency on the target list. It hit us that spouse might lose his employment with a stroke of a pen as soon as January, or worse, you-know-who (I can't bring myself to even write his name and the nicknames are so juvenile - this must be why they wouldn't say Voldemort's name in Harry Potter) will turn his agency into stasi. And spouse will quit because he doesn't want to be part of that. We went from stable guaranteed career employment to wondering if we'll be hobos living in a cardboard shack in the park this time next year. Overnight. Joking about bribing our friend the APD officer to look the other way. We debated what foreign language to learn in case we need to move out of the country. I say french for canada, he says spanish, but really my dream pick of a nation to move to would be finland, which means finnish or swedish. From online interactions, finland has made a very positive impression on me, and we could hack the cold. If they'd even want americans. Why would any sane nation want us - we are so obviously terminally stupid. I will never again refer to myself as american, only "I'm from alaska".
I've been an emotional mess this past week. I'm still an emotional mess. I really like our house and now it feels like it's just another temporary place we'll be leaving soon. I realized I threw away all our moving boxes and I cried. We have to clamp down and save money now. No more eating out. I don't think the anniversary party I was planning will happen, and that really hurts. Finally got to a place where we had the stability and money to throw something like a wedding reception ... now it's gone.
Things were so hard in the Land of Crab and we struggled through and made it ... spouse has a good job he likes, we bought the house ... Feels like we're right back in the shit where we started, anxious and counting pennies, putting off everything we can, not letting ourselves get our hopes up. I'll have to call the dentist and tell them we can't do the optional work at my next appointment that we'd planned.
I need to be bringing in money now, of course. What the fuck am I going to do, I'm basically useless.
It's not a bad thing to get a kick in the ass. I have been dawdling. Everything seems sharper now. A little urgency isn't terrible, if I'm honest. I have more options than a lot of people. I have a little time to plan.
My emotions are so raw on the surface I've been having anger problems. I only have the patience for one small thing to go wrong. Two small things and I completely lose my shit. I full-throated screamed at the kitten when he got underfoot, poor guy. It's embarrassing. I have so much rage under the thinnest membrane of control. I just want to take a bat to something fleshy and hurtable, but even that will fix nothing. So I immediately isolate myself in the bedroom before I target anyone or anything. Spouse and the cats don't deserve to live with anger like that. I am full of blind rage, like a balloon in a cactus garden. It feels awful.
I am going to have to quit gaming because 1) I need that free time for something useful, like finishing house projects in case we need to sell, and 2) I don't have the spare tolerance to sit down and make nice and pretend the world isn't eating itself. I don't want to flip out on my friends.
So now what? The horribleness has already started. The anxiety is ratcheting up. LOOK AT THE NEW AWFUL TERRIBLE DECISION COMING DOWN THE PIPELINE. LET'S GUESS WHAT THE NEXT RIDICULOUS DEBASEMENT OF OUR COUNTRY WILL BE AND HOW BADLY IT WILL RUIN EVERYTHING.
I just can't do it. These motherfuckers chose chaos. Here it is. I think I'm just going to have to not care. Buckle down, save money, get my shit done, weather the storm. Conserve on all fronts. Starve out the intolerance.
I really wanted the Fool to go away so I didn't have to hear his voice or worry about whatever dumb thing he was threatening. I wanted justice to prevail and for him to be rightly punished for his crimes. I wanted to know that sanity and integrity and truth and science still mattered. Maybe they will again eventually, in four years or a decade or several decades. But right now, we are on the train to crazytown and all we can do is hold on to our own ideals and resist the pressure to shift our mindset to be acceptable to the powers at large.
They're going to force christianity down our throats. They're going to incentivize being religious.
Again, I cannot believe people chose this ridiculous christian nationalist bullshit. I know I've ranted about this before. They're going to restrict whatever they target as immoral and the purity tests won't stop. "Protect the children!!!" Porn, video games, occult stuff, anything involving creativity or fantasy, other religions and philosophies, anything that doesn't fit in their little beige heterosexual box. It's going to be tacky christian rock playing in the supermarket, christian books recommended on amazon, christian movies in the theaters. People "finding jesus" and telling gushy transformational stories about how amazing church is and how it instantly cured their gayness/adhd/marital problems/depression/drug abuse. Christians getting hired by christian bosses. Christians getting sundays off and the non-christians will have to pull up the slack. Forced prayer at work and school. Changes in the tax code to encourage tithing. Open discrimination based on your clothing, piercings, hair style, skin color, or your lack of a visible cross.
We're all going to be infantilized in one way or another. Maybe men think they've dodged the bullet because they don't have a uterus. Just wait. It'll come around. Your decisions won't be your own anymore, you'll always have a higher authority to consult and get permission. You'll be sneaking around like a teenager living under his parent's roof. And all the internalized anger will roll down the chain of authority from the powerful to the powerless to keep us all on tiptoeing on eggshells.
I can't write about this anymore. It's so frustrating.
Last month I got an airbrush with my PFD money. It's not just "an airbrush", the airbrush itself is one component. I got a good quiet compressor, and accessories, hoses, cleaners, lubricants and paints. Now I'm second guessing if I should have spent the money, but there's so many things I've been excited to use it for. Mostly it's the best for working with stencils, and it's great for painting miniatures.
I'm hoping between the airbrush and the glass and metal engraving, I can start a small business. At least in the short term, it'll let me have flexibility while I bring in some income. Fortunately our mortgage payment is reasonable and not much higher than apartment rent. If spouse has to find a lower paying job, but I'm contributing, we should be able to scrape by. I need to get out in the world and make some connections.
I'm trying not to go doomer on myself and tell myself my plan is shit and I should just go work wherever I can get hired. But I've boxed myself into a place where art is sort of my thing. Getting an apprenticeship might not be a good move because it won't pay diddly squat for a yearish. But I can do the engraving and such. It's just a matter of finding the right markets and going where the customers are. Bringing home $1k a month should be doable, if I have enough sales opportunities and good production flow. It's the up front investment $$ that will hurt. The costs for vending booth fees and such.
This is assuming that tariffs don't snuff out the business opportunities I could get and some people still have money to spend on art objects ...
not thinking about that - not thinking about that - not thinking about that