Most days for me it isn’t even a question of remaining sane, but rather being able to focus on anything long enough to engage meaningfully with it. You could say that as a technically retired person seeking to spin up a freelance business, I’ve got nothing but time to engage with a lot of things, and in a sense that’s true. On the other hand, when I don’t have a lot of set projects to work on, it’s a lot easier to get distracted from the main task that would ameliorate that, i.e., drumming up more work. Between the ongoing government shutdown and the effects this is having on health insurance rates (as someone who self-insures this definitely applies to me), SNAP benefits (applicable to lots of people I know and more than likely many who you do, too), and longer-term consequences that will take awhile to fully manifest, it’s hard to turn my eye off the news and onto the business of everyday life.

I’m not sure if this is what the 1960s activists who coined the phrase meant by “the personal is political,” but it’s increasingly hard to avoid knowing about how shenaniganery (totally a word) in the halls of power turns the business of everyday life into a series of reactions. At least one person I know is fighting a cancellation of benefits that will literally kill them. Making phone calls (which takes hours because that’s how long it takes them to get through), submitting reams of documentation, making more phone calls, being told five different things by five different people, and all of this because they aren’t able to actually work a regular job.

Yeah, I’ve heard stories about people scamming the system. Sometimes the tellers even know the scammers personally. But I’ve never known a single person receiving SNAP or other benefits who didn’t need them. Some of them were or are getting help from friends and family, too, including me. But people who say that this kind of aid, and maybe charity, ought to be the entirety of what’s available really have no idea how great the need is.

And that’s just one example.

Just today I started reading a book that I’ll be reviewing for Library Journal that has this quote, so indicative of what I’m talking about: “it is far easier to go for a walk in the woods than it is to stop monsters from marching to power.” Especially since the monsters will likely march whether one goes for a walk in the woods or not. I see that not as an argument for not even trying to stop the monsters, but for recognizing that stopping them will take a lot of effort from a lot of people. Corollary to that, if the monsters do march to power, don’t assume that nobody tried to stop them. I’ve been alive long enough to remember efforts to prevent or at least hinder the current state of affairs, the roots of which go back further than we generally realize.

That’s the thing about studying history; it’s not so much that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, as those who do study history find out that there’s always another thing that came before.

In practical terms, I’ve had to put a hard limit on how much time I spend each day absorbing the news. This used to be a lot easier to do in the days of broadcast TV and physical newspapers, but it’s still possible. At a certain point you hit diminishing returns, anyway, and it takes time and energy away from taking action.

It also necessitates curating where you’re getting that news from, which is the kind of thing I used to teach as a research librarian focused on information literacy. I’ll be writing more about that soon, I think.