Last night… I did something unexpected and hopeful. I made a list of goals for myself. They’re temporary but they are 4 things that I wanted to do to give my life purpose. Which, as of late, has had none. When I look around at the world, burning around me, I find it increasingly difficult to make long-term plans. Whose to say that I will even bring them to fruition. I say that without a trace of irony and nothing but fearful sincerity.

My hope is that this list will give me something to focus on, other than the chaos. Which I have discovered is all-consuming. I had an intent to not look at social media while I was at work, however after having scrolled for a good 30 mins it occurred to me that I had already failed. This realization came entirely too late because I was already locked in the clutches of “panic.”

Yesterday I likened my obsessive scrolling to being trapped on a highway congested from a brutal, fatal car crash. You can’t look away as you slowly creep by, but you just have to know.

A secondary wish for this list is that it will cease the descent into cruelty. I find myself becoming increasingly apathetic to the pain of other people. In fact, I relish it. That makes me no better than those causing the harm. I don’t want to be that person. It is absolutely not who I am. However it’s difficult to not feel that way. They hurt me by putting him there, so I want them to hurt too. Most of what is happening is harming the people who allowed this to happen at all. They used their vote to spit in the face of “pussy liberal cucks” as some protest vote. Or as my mother loved to say, “cut off their nose to spite their face.”

I hesitate to admit it but I find, what most of the internet is referring to FAFO (fuck around and find out), joyous. Elated even. It brings me immense joy that I should not feel towards my fellow countrymen. Ultimately I am responding similarly to how they took the opportunity to vote this asshole into office, to spite their “enemies.”

What these people fail to realize is that we’re all in this boat together. So drilling holes in it to hurt the ones you don’t like will absolutely end up hurting you. Yet, I have heard that the reason they drilled the holes in the first place is because they felt betrayed to begin with. Which basically circles back to the one irrefutable truth: we have failed to listen and understand. We have failed at having basic human empathy.

Or maybe I am just too much of a “Pollyanna.”

To avoid the destruction of my soul, I will focus on these things:

1. Finish my professional education.
2. Learn to speak Spanish.
3. Become more competitive in Lorcana TCG.
4. Lose weight.

These are genuinely silly ambitions. Yet I see them as ways to soothe the roiling magma within me. With any luck, these will lead me to a place for myself in whatever unpredictable future lies ahead of all of us.