I woke up with another panic attack today.
I'm sitting here in my den, mindlessly guzzling my morning coffee, not enjoying it the way I usually do, trying to reorient myself so that I can be productive again.
This is an all too familiar feeling. Not new by any means, but certainly more exacerbated as things seem to keep falling apart around me.
I didn't create this blog to complain to you or to add yet another voice into the chorus of misery that seems to have replaced sociability.
But... here I am.
I'm struggling to be personable these days. The chorus of misery is drowning everything else out.
The chorus isn't new either - folks have been singing its various themes and movements throughout my life.
No one is happy. No one is stable. They never were. There are plenty of things in their lives to be happy for, sure, but those things are drowned out by obligations placed on us by people who feel no obligation to us.
"They wouldn't call it 'work' if it were meant to be fun. Suck it up."
I'm 50 now. I did all the things I was supposed to do. I spent more time studying than partying in high school so I could get into a good college. I spent more time worrying than enjoying my college years because no one taught me how I'd actually pay back the school loans when it was over. Between commuting, project crunch time, educating myself in the off hours, and simply thinking about school or work and its implications, I have never worked less than a 40 hour week since sixth grade.
How much more do you expect me to suck up?
I'm "sensitive". That's always been used against me as a pejorative. Usually by the kinds of people who see it as a weakness they can exploit.
But I can't shut it off. I'm all too aware of how everyone is feeling because they wear it on their sleeve. They tell you in their actions, where they pay their attention, and - if you actually stop and listen to them - in their words.
To protect myself, I have self-selected who I interact with. In the past, I was praised for my ability to become the calm center in any storm going on around me. I was able to do that because I had better control of my anxiety then. Because my mental model of the world - flawed as it was - at least gave me the confidence that things should, somehow, turn out OK.
That mental model has been shattered repeatedly since 2017, accelerating in 2020, with no slowing down today.
The marches in the streets. The fear of an actively oppressive regime. The rising cost of existence. The realization that the people in charge don't care a whit about the people who put them there - indeed, they seem to want to eliminate us and replace us with automatons they can control, even though they have no idea how they are built or how to use them.
There's no escaping it. You can't shut it out, even when you try. When I work to actively avoid the news, I still get it all second hand with every human interaction.
You can see the panic in their eyes. The scent of fear is so thick you can taste it. I've become so used to it you'd think I'd be inured to it by now, but, like rancid rotting flesh, it has a tendency to stick in the nostrils and linger on the taste receptors.
I have become too isolated, but I have completely lost my sense of trust.
People lie too much. They lie to each other about their feelings. They hide their fears, even though they are the same fears everyone else has.
They lie to themselves to try and make themselves feel better.
"It's not really that bad."
"I'm sure everything will turn out just fine."
"We just need to replace this administration with a different, 'better' one."
The same old answers aren't working anymore. They haven't worked for a while.
Our societal structures are obsolete. Hierarchies are obsolete. I know what we're experiencing is the death throes of an old world trying to retain control even as they see it slipping away through their fingers.
The people who relied on these old ways are responding the way cowards always do - spreading fear and violence, destabilizing as many people as possible to make them desperate for an answer, so those people will come running back to the people who caused all the problems in the first place seeking a solution.
They've lost their grip on us, and now they're making us pay.
And, because we literally know no better, too many of us are taking the bait. There's a lot of anger, but very little action.
The only thing that will stop this is for everyone to stand up against them and stop letting these fools control us.
We do that by denying them our labor, our attention, and access to our lives.
We need a General Strike, where everyone employed by another walks out of their jobs to form cooperative working agreements with their neighbors and members of their community, where everyone shares the work and the proceeds as equally as possible, preferably without any accounting for it - to do the work we all see is necessary in our neighborhoods and towns.
To do this requires an immense amount of trust between the people doing the work.
But no one wants to be the first one. And, unless you spend all your time organizing, you'll stand alone if you try.
I'm standing alone right now, and it's killing me and my family.
I've put all my hopes into this community networking platform I'm building. It feels ridiculous, but I can't see any other way out.
I want to organize, but the only tools to do so are run by the very people who are making all these problems worse. I could organize offline, but that severely limits my reach, even though my intended reach is literally the people in my city.
I live in the Bay Area. We adopted all this technology and treated it as an unalloyed good because so many of us are employed in the industry that claims to have created it.
We created it. They just exploited us, stole it from us, and claimed it as their own.
My refusal to capitulate any further to them has financially bankrupted me as I desperately try to build alternatives. The wolves are howling very loudly at the door, and I still have a shit ton of code to write to make it useful.
And, today, I woke up - again - with a panic attack. Coding requires a level of focus that feels like a Herculean effort especially under these conditions.
I persevere, and shall continue to do so. But I can feel myself eroding in the process.
I'm not sharing any of this with you to get you agitated, or to elicit sympathy. The only way out is through, and I'm digging like a mole and will continue to do so until I find light or the body quits on me.
I'm sharing this with you because I know I'm not alone in this. I know you feel the same way. I know you have for a while because I've seen it, smelt it, tasted it.
That sensitivity can be a curse sometimes.
The only way out is through. The only answer to encroaching fear is to build trust. We can only build trust when we are honest and transparent with each other.
I have no call to action here. Not right now, at least. I'm working on it.
I've been working on it for, like... ever. But I do feel closer now than I ever have.
I do see a glimmer of light. It's just... behind a shit ton of thick, heavy rocks I need to figure out how to move first.
I'll figure it out. I am figuring it out.
I just hope I can do it before everything else around me collapses.