I wrote a blog post yesterday (Thursday, actually).
And I saved, and saved, and previewed and proofed and saved . . . and then I added an image, and when I previewed with the image, the image wouldn’t show up. So I did stuff, removed and added it back, saved, yadda yadda yadda, and when I went to preview the page again, no image. So I decided to save one more time, back out, close the window down and start over.
When I reopened my index page, my slaved-over blog was not there.
I nearly had a freakin’ heart attack.
So here’s the whole story. My son and I were supposed to get together Thursday (it’s our usual hang-out day), he was coming down for lunch and I was making farinata (one of his faves) and saute’d zucchini, mushrooms and tomatoes, spiced with chili powder, oregano and cumin seed with just a kiss of lime. And his car wouldn’t start. Dead battery. So we decided to postpone until Friday, and he planned to do some extra credit for one of his classes. Then he discovered that the AC adapter for his laptop was completely dead, and his laptop battery was nearly dead as well. We were both feeling pretty bummed about that (though Michael and I enjoyed the incredible lunch I made and yes, there were leftovers for Friday so we enjoyed it again).
And then the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality.
Confession: the repeal of Net Neutrality strikes icy fear into my heart. Everything I am working toward, dreaming of, building for my future, kind of depends on a free and open internet. I have given money to organizations fighting to preserve it, and I have talked about it and posted about it and signed a bajillion petitions and registered my feelings with the FCC on the site they set up specifically to do so, left voice messages about it on their voicemail . . . And this is the one issue that wakes me up in a cold sweat in the night. All the work I am doing, all the groundwork I have laid, could be for nothing if the fat cats newly appointed to the FCC let the fat cat telecom companies have their way. And I would be stuck trying to salvage what I could of my dreams and find a way around it, find compromises, let big chunks of it go . . . huge chunks of it go.
I felt the icy fingers of fear pricking into my flesh, wrapping themselves around my heart and my spine and my guts and my brain. I felt betrayed and hopeless and furious and despairing and didn’t know whether to hit things or burst into tears or take a long walk or . . .
I called the FCC again (888-225-5322) and left another voice message letting them know I was betrayed and furious and shaking and heart-sick at their decision. I called my Congressman, Dave Lobsack – both offices – to let him know I appreciated him and hoped he would take the next appropriate steps to reverse this disastrous decision (he is one of the rare good ones, and I meant every word of thanks – look up your representative here and call them today and tomorrow and the next day). And I paced. And I texted people. And I got on Facebook and started posting links so people could find their Congressional Reps and call to encourage them to support Congressional Review of this decision in order to reverse it; I posted links to the ACLU to raise money to help them continue to fight this bullshit. I stepped away and did a little more pacing.
And then I remembered Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech to the University of Arts, and his admonishment to students to “make good art” whenever life got iffy or ugly or painful. So I sat down to write a blog post.
It was a beautifully snarky, gloriously righteous, fiercely hilarious, brilliant bit of having a screaming fucking fit.
And then it was gone.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
It was gone. And I knew I wouldn’t survive a tech support call at that moment, even from the super friendly folks at Bluehost. So I got up from my desk to have another good pace, and only then did I remember that I know how to calm myself and be in the moment so I can face challenges with grace instead of being a total mess, and in that moment, I realized it was a blessing and a sign that my thrashing, sarcastic, furious, wailing blog post had disappeared into the vortex.
“What am I feeling, right now?” Anger. Despair. Betrayal. Hopelessness on a huge scale. Fear. Outrage. And it’s way bigger than this one disastrous decision. It has been building up for months and I haven’t been expressing it. I am watching the country I would love to love expose the ugliest part of its underbelly – and an alarming number of people are fucking proud of how fucking ugly the underbelly is. My heart is getting broken on a daily basis by the lack of compassion, the grasping, desperate, money-grubbing greed, the willful harm that is being done to our most vulnerable citizens, the xenophobia and the misogyny and the devotion to toxic dogmas that are so far from true that true is not even a speck in that sky.
And I broke.
“What am I feeling, right now?” Heartache, pain, disappointment, disgust, dismay, despair, rage. Breathe and allow it, allow these feelings their moment. Nothing can hurt me right now. Nothing is wrong in this moment. Pull back to this moment, feel this pain and allow it to run its course.
It took a while, but eventually I settled back down. What I learned was, I still have a long way to go to be able to process fear and betrayal and anger. I can’t allow myself to keep that shit bottled up because when it overflows, I fall apart. Even though it pains me to admit it, I have to be grateful for yesterday’s death by 1000 paper cuts, because it drew my awareness to something I need to work on. What I want for myself is to handle adversity with grace, and I fell way way short of grace yesterday.
So hey, good news, I have an opportunity to get better and stronger and smarter and wiser. And more good news, so do we all. And it looks like by the time we get this underbelly dealt with, we’re all going to be transcendent Zen Druids and have some bad-ass superpowers. Ready or not, here we go.
May the light of the Angels surround you, the Master of Sacred Sound sing to you sweetly, and all the Powers of Righteousness, Truth and Beauty light your way.