Well, shit

I went to bed early last night so I wouldn't freak out waiting for the election results to come in (and, well, also because I was just freaking exhausted). I woke up this morning to the headline that Trump -- probably the least qualified candidate for public office in America -- has somehow managed to be reelected. 

And I'd say something like, "Oh God, another four years of this shit," but he's not coming in cold this time. He's got all the architects of Project 25 around him, all the Christian Nationalists and Fascist grifters with their plans to convert the country from an aspiring (if not always successful) pluralistic democracy to their own private country club/police state. They're going to do their absolute best to make sure that not only can they do all the horrible things they want and get away with it, but also that in four years we're not going to be able to vote them back out. Oh, it may still look like a democracy, and I've no doubt there will be elections; but those will mainly be for show, and all the legal and structural bulwarks designed to keep any one group from amassing too much power will be weakened, ignored, or simply removed. 

No, this four years is going to be a lot worse than the last. They're going to hit the ground running. And they're going to hit the country hard.

And I keep saying "they" because Trump is really just the tip of the iceberg. All he wants out of this is to be able to hurt anybody he wants to hurt without ever facing the possibility of being hurt himself. He doesn't have some grand vision for the country or some ultimate goal in mind; he just wants to confirm that he's special, that he's better, that he's above. Trump was never the cause of all this, for all that he pushed it along; he was the inevitable outcome of forty years of Republican policy and political planning, engineered mainly by the world's oligarch class and enabled by the institutions that they own. 

It's going to get ugly. Not for everybody all at once -- they'll go after the easy targets first -- but it's going to get ugly. Trump told us exactly what he was going to do, and now he's going to do it. Project 25 was right there, written almost entirely by people associated with his staff, and now they're going to follow through with it. 

It's also going to get weird. RFK jr. in charge of public health, planning to ban vaccines and Flouride in water? (Seriously, when was the last time you heard conspiracy theories about Flouride in the water? 1979? 1983?) News sources making editorial decisions based on the whims of their super-rich owners, or their investors' desire to stay on the government's good side? Elon Musk reorganizing the very government that basically keeps his companies in business? Ted Cruz somehow still in office? It's going to be surreal. 

Hang onto your hats folk, and start looking at mutual support networks. We're all going to need a lot of help to get through this, and the only people we have are each other.

And if you just can't escape despair? Be Eowyn, not Denethor.

Election Day

Yeah, it's election day. Secondborn has no school today -- ostensibly so that the eighteen-year-olds can vote, but I suspect actually because a fair number of schools are also polling places and the school district is worried about violence. And rightly so, given that no small part of the right wing is currently busy convincing itself that the election will have been stolen by Democrats -- unless their would-be dictator actually wins, of course -- and gleefully preparing for violence in response. 

I'm planning to keep my head down and only glance at social media sparingly. I don't think I'll be able to resist the urge entirely, but I also don't think we'll have a clear winner until at least tomorrow, and maybe not even by the end of the week. The folks responsible for running the election -- as opposed to the grifters and political operatives trying to manipulate it -- are going to want to have their facts line up as well as possible before making any pronouncements.

All in all, this is a good time to practice self-care: limit your doom-scrolling, make sure you're eating food and hydrating, get up and move around, do things -- non-political things -- to distract yourself. (Indiana Jones moves, for example, are famously apolitical.) I'd urge you to vote if you haven't already, but I doubt you need to hear it from me; if you're like the rest of us, every bit of media you consume has been inundated for weeks with the message that you need to get out there and vote. You know your conscience, and you're going to do what you think is best. Take good care of yourself while you do it.

Slowly Recovering

Woke up from a dream in which I was simultaneously helping Secondborn out with some perfectly ridiculous challenges (gathering treasure off a ledge while hanging by one hand from a metal beam above it, so I could use the other hand to pull a switch and let a small platform swing down for him to stand on) and helping him line up the elements of the video game in which those challenges were taking place. It was a weird contrast; the whole hanging-from-a-beam and leaping-across-ledges sequence was intensely first-person, while the meta- elements were much more abstract -- for example, each possible monster or opponent in the game was represented by a card from a standard deck of playing cards; you assembled a "full deck" by defeating everything the game had to offer. (I guess maybe the Jokers were optional random encounters? I don't know.) 

It struck me as I was sort of reviewing all this in my mind during the process of waking up that a lot of the physical challenges would have been... maybe not easy, but pretty matter-of-fact stuff in my youth. Nowadays, of course, hanging by one hand from a beam while doing something else with the other hand? I could manage it for a moment... maybe... at best. 

And it's not just because I've gotten older. I'm still unpacking a lot of this, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that a lot of it was because my former job just kind of... ground me down. Not obviously, and not even maliciously, but it just wore me down until all I really wanted to do was curl in on myself so I could stop being unhappy. Making some new local friends and being part of one the world's most epic D&D games helped pull me out of that, but changing jobs was what really did it. And frankly, for a long while there changing jobs didn't seem possible, because my job title ("web designer") wasn't actually something I did or could do, and what I could do and was doing was in no way reflected in my job title or official responsibilities (or my pay, but that's its own special three-page rant). 

It's weird not to feel trapped.

I mean, no it isn't, or it shouldn't be, but after nearly a decade of that bullshit it still feels weird. I don't trust it. I feel like I'm doing a much shittier job than my co-workers seem to think I'm doing, and I don't even know what a sensible metric would look like anymore. Being in what was, in retrospect, a pretty shitty job even if I was pretty good at it, well... it messed with my head. It messed with my health. Hell, it messed with my marriage and my parenting. It was a shitty situation and I'm glad to be out of it, and if you're sitting around on a Sunday night filled with a sense of dread about having to go to work in the morning, then I want you to stop telling yourself that your job is "really not that bad" and go find something you actually enjoy showing up for, or at least something that's enough of a change that you can approach it with some kind of equanimity. Because your job? It is that bad. It's bad enough that you dread going back to it.

I hit a point a couple of weeks ago where my whole system basically crashed. Like, I was sleeping fourteen hours a day -- I couldn't help it -- and my immune system just absolutely bottomed out, so every weird little occasionally-recurring health issue that I've acquired over the last decade or more all set in at once, and my ability to focus -- on anything -- was just gone. (That's part of why the last chunk of blog entries have been characters from Saint Vincent's School; not only do I need to have them prepared before I launch into a writing project, but I literally can't launch into the writing project itself yet. The energy and the focus just aren't there.) I'm coming back out of it, slowly, but it honestly felt like all the burnout I've developed over the last twelve years just hit me all at once.

...And then Daylight Savings Time came along again, but I digress. Honestly, my sleep schedule is weird enough right now that I'm not sure if my body will even notice that. 

My New Year's resolution -- which I'm setting for myself, right now, here at the beginning of November, because fuck arbitrary calendar dates for this shit -- is to get back to myself. I used to have a sense of humor; I'm slowly getting it back, but I want to be making more jokes, laughing more, saying stupid shit without being self-conscious about it. I used to be athletic; I'm not ever going to get back to my fifteen- or seventeen-year-old youth and fitness, but I'd like to slim down and at least feel sexy again. I'd like to be able to climb things without getting winded. I'd like to take up some kind of martial arts again, time permitting. One of the great gifts that the World's Most Epic D&D Campaign gave me was that it got me going on my writing again, and I'd like to keep moving forward with that. I don't have any interest in taking up running again, but I'd like for it to at least be an option. 

I'd like to be doing more than just getting through the day again, and I'm starting to believe that might be possible.

Faculty: Jinx

Name: David Anthony Jenkins
Codename: Jinx
Age: 43
Appearance: Tall, lean, gray-haired man, frequently unshaven or with a goatee
Job: teaches computers and technology, maintains the school's network and security, sponsors the photography club

Mr. Jenkins is a friendly, affable man with shoulder-length gray hair, frequently unshaven and sometimes sporting a goatee. He teaches computer science, programming, and related topics, and has a hobbyist's interest in photography. He's also the school's primary IT officer, assisted by Mr. Henderson for networking and security issues, and by a helpdesk team composed of interested students to handle basic troubleshooting and reporting. 

Jinx is honestly more of a nickname than a codename, as Mr. Jenkins is a more recent addition to the faculty and was never part of the original team (or any other teams, for that matter). He has the ability to adjust his eyesight out of the visible range and into either infrared or ultraviolet, a power which he has described as "niche" and "mostly useless". He is close friends with Ms. Salvatore and Wolfman Bob, and has a son from a previous marriage.

Halloween!

Yeah, no, sorry: I've got nothing spooky cued up for today. Our house is suitably decorated and I'm ready with candy, monsters, and teeth to give away, but I'm just not quite into it this year. I'm honestly not too much into anything right now, even writing, except that I'm very much trying to get myself in order: diet, sleep schedule, exercise, new job, that sort of thing. Self-care, basic self-care, which we've all long known that I'm particularly bad at.

...And once I get home tonight, I'll make ready with the treats. 

Student: Harbinger [Team Kraken]

Name: "Lucian Assarte" (an alias; his real name is Lyceus Antonius)
Codename: Harbinger
Age: 17
Appearance: 6', curly black hair, olive skin, brown eyes
Notable Skills: wrestling, gymnastics, dance, knife-fighting, unarmed combat, poison, basic sorcery, politics & society, Latin
Quirks:enjoys sneaking around, very curious about his fellow students and the school, protective of his privacy, exercises to help himself relax, loves being in the water.

Lucian is the latest arrival at the school, and holds the dubious distinction of being the only student ever to walk onto the campus and ask to be admitted. He is still finding his away around, both academically and socially, but he's already starting to make connections. Paula Stone and Cedric Johnson (Catapult and Wrecker of Team Dragon) have both taken a liking to him, and try to include him in various activities. 

Following an unfortunate accident with another student, Lucian was invited to try out for Team Kraken; he chose the name Harbinger because he liked the way it sounded. He seems to have two very different sets of powers; on the one hand, he has a number of physical advantages, and on the other he has a nearly-impenetrable mind shield that makes him inaccessible to telepathy and related mental powers.

Student: Investigator [Team Phoenix]

Name: Ryan Jacob Darling
Codename: Investigator
Age: 17
Appearance: 6'1", muscular, with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, olive skin.
Notable Skills: Football, track, hockey, firearms, bows, various crafts, camping, riding horses
Quirks:enjoys knitting, sports fan, loves pizza/burgers/hot dogs, owns a horse, loves camping/hunting/fishing

Ryan enjoys working out and is in many ways the quintessential jock, participating in a variety of sports and outdoor activities. He works to keep his grades up, but almost always has some sort of crafting project going -- anything from minor woodworking, to leatherwork, to sewing costumes for the school's theater. He knits when he's sitting still; he says it gives him something do with his hands. 

His role on Team Phoenix is primarily exploratory and investigative; his extra abilities aren't physical, and the limited amount of telekinesis that he possesses is only moderately useful for combat. However, his ability to see and listen to events at a distance has proven extremely useful -- and his ability to sense psychic residue and past events by touching items or people has been invaluable.