My apologies for the radio silence lately. There have been many things I’ve thought to write about over the last week or two, but it’s all frankly been so despairing that I couldn’t bring myself to do so. It feels like the world is figuratively on fire — and in some cases it has literally been on fire — and there’s such a helplessness to watching it burn. Crucial as it is to speak up, to speak out, I just haven’t had the energy beyond doing so in helping my older students make sense of things (while compartmentalizing so I don’t let out the wrong words or emotions around the younger ones).

I’ll just sum up my point of view this way, in case it hasn’t already been made clear what side of the fence I live on: yes, I think things are fucking insane, and yes, I’m horrified by it all. But every day, I have to fight the existential dread of living in a repeat of a time in world history that sought the destruction of my people, and try to, ya know, function. So it’s been a delicate balance of focusing on any positive straws I can grasp, and not invalidating my own emotions about it all. It’s been a time of figuring out how to simultaneously remain hyper-vigilant and stay open to good things that may come my way.

Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin.

So I’m leaning in to simple stuff that brings joy and peace, however fleetingly. If I string enough of those fleeting good moments together, I can hopefully weave a tapestry of good days — or at least, one of those loosely crocheted blankets that have more gaps than tight stitches. We’ll see. I’m a painter, not a fabric artist. (I tried to make a quilt once out of my old t-shirts, but, after sewing myself to…myself, I had to concede that such work was not for me and switched to fabric glue after that.)

Living a little more simply. That’s the goal.

Well, this evening, we indeed had to live more simply. Our power went out, just as I finished cooking dinner and was putting it on the table. We’ve been getting hammered by snow squalls over the last two days, and some power lines went down in our area. Rumor has it that a utility pole had caught fire too! Crazy. Anyway, this was at about 6:30PM. The estimated return of power was indicated to be a couple hours from then, so, we ate by candlelight and then lit more candles in the living room after dinner. My five-year-old daughter was puzzled and concerned by the power outage, as we have rarely had it go out for more than a minute in her experience. Dinner conversation was dominated by questions like how electricity worked and whether it would come back before bedtime.

She understood we wouldn’t be watching TV, and the candlelight didn’t really give us enough light to play a board game by, so we settled in on the armchair together and I read a couple of chapters from the book we’ve been slowly working our way through over the last month or so (Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, a big favorite of mine, highly recommend for any fantasy reader). It was a simple and comforting experience, reading a story by candlelight to my husband and daughter and dog. Yes, the dog eagerly joins storytime every night. There was a sense of unhurried companionship that came from having nothing electronic on, much like families would have had back in the day when there was no such thing as electricity. It was nice.

So here’s a bit of unsolicited advice. You can ignore it, but, since this is my blog, you came here to read my words, and I’ll do what I want with them. Now that my power is back on, restored literally two minutes after my kid fell asleep (haha), I can write them without worrying about killing my phone battery.

Try not to doom scroll; balance staying informed with staying sane. Slow down. Live simply. Maybe try reading by candlelight!

In all seriousness — just take things one day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time. Take care of yourself, and when you can, take care of each other. Try to strike a balance between acknowledging fear and embracing hope.

I’ll write when I can, but know that I am out there fighting the good fight too. One day, one hour, one minute at a time. And, learning mostly the hard way how to take care of myself.