3 February: sitting with hard thoughts
It’s trendy right now to post reminders to take care of yourself, find joy in little things, step back from the doomscrolling's & the media flamethrower of gobsawful bad news…
So of course Imma be the minority report.
Standing witness/reinforcing others is my default mode, as I am not a comforting person, nor skilled at delivering either inspiration or practical knowledge. Neither am I any good at community building, because that requires organizational and peopling stamina that I lack.
But I need step outta my comfort zone and say an important thing to all my folks in the US of AAAAAGH:
Don’t wait for worse, prepare for worst now, consider harm scenarios, and run through what actions you’ll take.
With a side note of: I promise not all my posts will be downer politically-adjacent drama, but hey, this one kinda is. Pippin’s at the end of the post, If that’s more our scene.
And to everyone who’s beyond planning anything because you’re fighting mentally just to remain conscious & semi-functional in the face of Current Events: I get it. Much of this post is in 2nd person, but if it doesn’t resonate with you, then it’s not aimed at you.
When I say think & plan, and act, I mean on an “when you can” basis. It’s not something to do in long sessions, or all day long, any more than training for a marathon is something you do overnight or even in a month or few.
Speculating is kinda like my job, because thinking what-ifs leads to stories, right? So my mental “sitting with scary possibilities” muscles are in good shape already. Plus I’m insulated from the immediate worst situations by perceived gender/orientation, race, and income—
And yet what I’m suggesting is hard for me right now.
So if you can’t, I understand. And if you want to, but you could use help, reach out. Shout out. Squeak, if that’s what you can manage. Helping is a thing that energizes me. Keep that in mind.
I’ve been doing a lot of this “sitting with bad thoughts” for a goodly while and not writing about it, and the pressure’s been building up. The rest of this entry is just me logging things and spend time processing.
So, anyhow, I’ve been sitting with the future (tm) and doing disaster planning since November & December. Okay, I’ve done catatrophe-buffering all my life on a low-key scale, (I mean. My first long fictional work was called Legacy of Ashes, FFS, and when I pivoted away from imagining total global destruction, I only pivoted a few degrees to “we left enough standing that we can rebuild it.)
But I started plotting on Election Day, ramped up after I survived appendix surgery, and have slammed into overdrive once it became clear the descent into chaos is much steeper than even I anticipated.
The scope of my preventative actions has widened dramatically. It started with discretionary spending, tbh. I 100% knew I should update vital documents in hard-copy form, confirm our social donations were maxed, and invest in new tech, spices. tea, and other sundries that were sure to skyrocket in prices once tariffs hit.
(Yes, those were actions of a privileged, white cishet-presenting lady. But those on-again-off-again tariffs are clearly only the tip of the economic fuckery to come, and if I end up in a position where people need help around me, I need to have things on hand to offer. So…shopping. It’s a thing I can do.)
Anyway, now I’m in the surreal position of making lists of things to keep on-hand that I haven’t thought about stocking since “Oil Crisis” was in the news, like canned fruits, meats, & veg—and more critically, powdered milk & eggs.
Because the chickens are dying in the millions, and that’s gonna be a multi-year recovery even at the rate they breed & mature. (Fun fact, meat will recover before eggs because rooster chicks will grow to slaughtering size sooner than new hens begin to lay.)
Keep in mind that’s if the bird flu outbreak doesn’t get worse…which I am not betting on.
But. I. Digress.
Lately other actions have expanded to include ordering a new external hard drive for doing more complete offline backups—plus space for downloading and saving any information I think I might need at any point in the future. It’s looking like bad weather ahead for anything in cloud storage, and data hoarding is my kind of hoarding.
Also I’m pulling all my documents out of subscription programs (that weren’t subscription when I started them, dammit) and into LibreOffice. This is going to take Rather A Lot Of Time. But I’m doing it. Because fuck not owning my own creations.
(Also, do I have a DVD player, my own stash of media, & a DVD read-write drive? You betcha.)
I’ve also spent time working through my emotions about hard things that will happen when I end up between the Forces Of Evil Law And Order and their targets. When will that happen? I hope never. But it’s best to plan for the worst. I read history. I know I’m under the rule of Evil Overloads right now.
Do I enjoy worrying about being jailed, assaulted, or killed because I refuse to comply with “lawful” orders from fascists? Nope. But I’m conditioning myself—and doing research, and learning proper tactics— for acting morally when the jackboots come to my door, when they ask me to turn in someone else to save myself, when I witness assaults or other wrongdoing.
Basically bracing and training myself to not act in knee-jerk self-preservation but instead to do what’s right. And part of that is acknowledging the real possibility that I’ll lock up or do a Wrong Thing in the heat of the moment. I also have to go down the unhappy decision lines of remediating error, learning from failure and trying again.
Luckily there are a lot of activists and organizers and people with gobs of community action experience in the world. So I’m not trying to learn anything from scratch.
Anyway, I would suggest that as often as you can bear it, block out time to sit and contemplate the hellscape honestly and take a small, ember-stomping step of action or two—because we are living in a hellscape run by monsters now, and if you don’t mentally practice putting out the flames of oppression, you definitely won’t be strong enough to deal with the heat when the fire is on your doorstep.
That’s more than enough info dumping and vague-posting for one entry.
In happier news, I have written whole paragraphs of my untitled cat-in-the-laundry room story, I’m into season 5 of Stargate SG-1, and my Cats and Soup: Fluffy Town game is my daily soothing escape into cute feline farming.
And here’s a Pippin pic.
Fluffy Pippin lounging on a plaid fleecy blanket, enjoying the sun while he can.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)