Sometimes, I forget I have depression.

You see, my meds work pretty well and I’m good at doing the other things that help. Exercise. Sleep. Decent nutrition. My job and family are good so they don’t lay additional stress on me.

So, most of the time, the depression is under control.

Then there are the times when it’s not. Like right now.

It’s February, which is the worst month of the year (don’t @ me about this, I will die on this weird hill of February hate). It’s dark and it keeps raining here. The kind of rain that means my lawn is so soggy that I soak my shoes every time I need to do something like take out the recycling.

Depression makes a very big deal out of the soaked shoes. I could let the recycling pile to the ceiling if I let my depression dictate the terms by which I walk on my soggy lawn.

I have some new projects happening in my family life and they require a lot of energy. None of of your beeswax what they are. I write the least about those whom I love the most and I do it on purpose. Today is no different. Trust me when I say what they need from me is taking all I have to give. But the problem is all of this is new so anxiety is coming out to play with depression and they’re assholes when they get together.

I’d love to hide from the depression and anxiety by escaping into a book but the those two assholes have provoked my ADHD to the point that I can’t even flee reality effectively. All I want to do is scroll social media for the dopamine fix of comments and likes but my social media is so geared toward politics that – you guessed it – it gets my depression going again.

I’ve got reinforcements to back me up here. I’m not in any danger of harming myself or anyone else. What I need most is the space to not be fully myself and also not have to explain it. So, this is the explanation. I have depression. It sucks. But I will better in my own time. If I don’t think I will, I promise I will ask for help.

I have an extremely thin record of engagement with political campaigns. There are reasons for this and none of them are apathy, obviously. I care about the outcomes of elections. I just…hate campaigns.

When it comes to donating, if I have some money in my hand that I can donate somewhere, I tend to think about non-profits that are actually providing something to real people. Are you an entity that assists in getting people food, clothing, shelter, or medical care? Then take my money!

Are you an impermanent organization existing mostly for the sake of one person’s dream of holding office and don’t offer any real boost to people in my community? Um…I’ll be over here giving my money to a food bank.

But I don’t feel like I have the luxury of being a non-profit snob right now. Some of the latest research I’m seeing indicates that voter motivation is going to be a key factor in the election, no matter who we nominate. This lady – who got a lot right in 2018 – says that it’s really about getting (Dem sympathetic) people to the polls and, to do that, we need to overcome actual apathy.

Which means twits like me need to get to getting out the vote.

I lack the emotional stamina for face-to-face interactions with a lot of strange people. When I was younger I could have managed door knocking and phone banking but these days I am too accustomed to very controlled amounts of human contact – much of which is with people to whom I am related or married – so the prospect of jumping into an hours-long shift where I have to meet supervisors, fellow volunteers, and potential voters is just too much for my frayed nerves.

But this is 2020 and text banking is a thing and OH MY GOD! You guys! It’s like Twitter but with a purpose! I feel like I have found my calling!

I signed up to join the text team for Elizabeth Warren and I can sit at my desk and engage in written language (my favorite!) with potential primary voters! There’s an online system so I have support from the campaign at all times. Managing a batch of text is about 30-40 minutes of intense work then checking back for new responses for the next couple of days.

Am I changing any minds? I dunno. Probably not many but certainly more than I would change by doing nothing. Will I keep doing this throughout the primary process? Yup. If Warren drops out, I’ll do it for Biden. If Biden falls apart, I’ll do it for Klobuchar. I’ll keep picking candidates until we pick a candidate.

I’ll do the same for the eventual nominee, too. Probably. I’d be cautious before entering into a volunteer situation with Bernie supporters. The interactions I’ve had with them have left a bad taste in my mouth but I’m also confident they will do some great work on GOTV efforts without me. I’ll work for downticket candidates instead.

All of which is to say, we have entered the age of political action for introverts. I welcome it and embrace it wholeheartedly.

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Bibhash Banerjee from Pexels

After I had my babies, I noticed something about my body. I still had everything I had before giving birth. Just…nothing was where I left it. I had to adjust my expectations for the new landscape of my skin and joints.

This is not to say my body wasn’t great after having kids. It works just fine. It’s just really different than it was before.

That’s where we are as a country. We are in a period of radical and unstoppable change. Shit is going down, it has been going down for three years, and it will continue to go down. When progressives get the chance to take control again, nothing is going to be where we left it.

We all need to dispense with notions of taking our country back. There will be no return to the America of 2016. That American is in the past and we cannot restore it. We can look at old photos of and remember those times fondly but that’s not the body politic and body sociological that we will have in 2020.

Every single one of us needs to thinking about reinventing America. Treat this process like we would treat renovating a house that’s been neglected and pillaged. Just leave the framework and re-built everything inside.

Because, let’s face it, the old wiring in our country was going to burn the house down at some point. The Constitution was written without the input of women, enslaved persons, or people from the indigenous nations. The changes we have made along the way were generally white male interpretations of what other groups of people want. To torture this analogy further, we didn’t really do the necessary repairs: we just kind of painted over the old wallpaper and hoped it wouldn’t all come peeling off later.

It’s later and it’s all peeling off.

As we look to the future, imagine what we could do with fresh drywall and framing that is up to current code (I can’t let this analogy go, I’m sorry). Imagine new plumbing that isn’t tainting the water as it comes into the house, like in Flint. Dream of eco-friendly heating and air conditioning that is more efficient that what we had before. Pick new colors and new styles and a soundsystem that allows everyone to be heard.

I have come this far and now I can’t stop with the home repairs to loop this back to the pregnancy analogy I started with. This is turning into a writing fail. OMFG.

Anyway, as screwed up as my literary techniques are here, the basic soundness of my argument should be unquestionable. We cannot go back. We can go forward and we must go forward. Plan for that instead of worrying about everything that has been broken these past three years.

To awkwardly and imperfectly finally return to the pregnancy idea, there’s no use crying over spilled breastmilk. We just need to wipe it up, pump the next batch and keep going.

Yesterday, Iowa held its antiquated and exclusionary process for assigning nominating delegates known as the “Iowa Caucuses.” There are approximately a trillion reasons that caucuses should go the way of the dinosaur but that’s not the subject of this rant.

No, the problem today is that Iowa Democratic Party screwed the pooch with its data reporting system and now we don’t know who won the caucus. And once we do know who won, no one will believe it because no one trusts how the reporting was conducted. It’s a short cognitive leap from “Are you sure they wrote that down right after the app crashed?” to “IT WAS RIGGED BY ALIENS!!!!!”

You do not want people think elections are rigged. People who think that, don’t vote because they honestly believe aliens will steal their ballots and change the outcome.

We have MAJOR problems with our election systems in the country. We have gerrymandering. We have the racist-ass electoral college system that was created to appease slave owners. We have hack-able electronic voting machines. We have Republican state elections officials who purge voters for shits and giggles. We have states shutting down precincts in minority neighborhoods. And we have this dumb idea that elections need to happen on a Tuesday and workers don’t get paid time off to go vote.

It’s bad. Read bad.

Also? It’s on purpose.

The system we have is a system put in place to uphold existing power structures and devalue the popular will. It’s a system rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy and the only reason it’s as inclusive as it is now is because people bled and died for voting rights.

Nowadays, we have the rights but those cagey white supremacists have gone after access and election integrity. That is why we have this shambles of a system. Voting requires a person to make a complicated plan for checking registration, finding poll locations and times, and arranging transport, work coverage, and childcare even before you can look at a ballot. If one piece of the Jenga game that is US voter participation slides, CRASH! That voter doesn’t vote.

Iowa is a wake up call to the rest of us that we need feet on the ground during the election to make sure it’s as fair as it can be. Fortunately, we live in the same moment of history as Stacey Abrams and she is mobilizing a movement for this very thing. Check our Fair Fight to learn more about what we all can do.

Post Photo Credit: By Douglas W. Jones – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37953786

Reading is my favorite thing to do. If I had the opportunity to just sit around and read books for the rest of my life, I would happily do so. Sadly, no one is offering me this opportunity and my kids keep insisting that i stop reading to do boring things like drive carpool and cook dinner.

When left to my own devices, I pick a lot of books with murders and intrepid female detectives that solve them. This is not doing anything for my intellect so I also try to pick books that will teach me something or reflect my basic principles of living.

Which brings us to Black History Month and what I plan to read in observance. The obvious choice would be to read actual Black history but I’m taking a different approach. I decided to read books by current authors and to purchase the books instead of borrowing them from the library. I figure, in my own small way, I’m letting the publishing industry know there is a market for books written by Black authors.

Well, ok, I’m reading one book by a dead Black author. I’m finally reading Kindred by Octavia Butler which has been on my list forever and I’m doing it as an audio book. Time travel and history and a kickass female heroine all in one book? Yes, please!

Anyway, these are the books by living authors that I have picked up so far. I will probably choose several others as the month goes on (I’m a fast reader) so suggetsions are welcome!

• Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
• Red At The Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
• Children Of Virtue And Veangance by Tomi Adeymi
• The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré
• Feminism Is For Everybody by bell hooks
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I want to read the upcoming book by Homegoing author Yaa Gyasi soooooo much but it won’t be out until September. Something to look forward too but I get so impatient!

Anyway, that’s my list so far. If I add more titles, I’ll post about them! In the meantime, I’m on Goodreads as Rebekah Kuschmider and I post what I’m reading there regularly. a

The United States Senate voted to cut short the trial of Donald J. Trump on charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. This move clears the way for a final vote on acquittal. Then the current impeachment will be over and the president will, forever and always, be the guy who got off on a technicality.

That technicality has a name. Actually, a bunch of names. Fifty-one of them to be exact.

Now, this suuuuuuucks. Not only does it mean Trump will get to strut around like a drunken duck, quacking about his exoneration, but it also sets some very shady legal precedent that I will let some lawyer explain later. In the meantime, we have tonight to get up in our feelings about the fifty-one people who would rather let a criminal off on a technicality then face the criminal’s goon squad of obsessed fans back home.

I mean, really. They’re afraid of people in MAGA hats swarming their twitter accounts. Twitter is optional, folks, Delete your account and you won’t get trolled. Boom. Fixed.

Annnnnyyyyway. We get tonight to get into our feelings and then? Tomorrow we begin the dissent. Pull up your dissent socks and get to your dissent work.

Like to write? Send some letters to the editor about the way you dissent.

Got an artistic bent? Make some dissent yard signs for your house.

Into direct dissent action like registering people to vote in cRitical electoral states? GET ON A BUS TO THOSE STATES, BABY! DISSENT AT THE BALLOT BOX IS THE BEST DISSENT!

We were never going to get un-Trumped through regular order in the Senate. Those people are lost to us. We cannot count on them to serve any interest but their own. The good news in there are only about 51 of them in the way of progress.

The bad news is that every single one of us will have to work our asses off for the next 9 months to make our dissent heard.

But we can do that. The abolitionists did it. The suffragettes did it. The Civil Rights movement did it. The LGBTQ Rights movement is still doing it. They had it way harder than we do now (well, those of us who are white now, at least. Others have a bigger hill to climb). If they could do it, so could we.

Dissent is patriotic. Let’s dissent the fuck out of this year until we finally overcome precedent and make our voices heard.

“That’s the problem with the American Dream – makes everyone concerned for the day they’re gonna be rich.” – The West Wing

Yes, I know I quoted The West Wing. And yes I know that is the most basic Democrat nostalgia maneuver ever. But that quote is also true. The only thing more true than that quote is this tweet:

I sometimes think that fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans is an optimism gap. Republicans are protecting themselves for the day in the future when they might be rich – tax cuts, perks for business owners, etc. Democrats are protecting themselves for the day in the future when they might be poor – food stamps, Social Security Disability, unemployment benefits.

The problem, of course, is that all the current rich people are better organized that the current non-rich so it keeps working out that their current demands are addressed first.

It’s easy to say that it’s the money that gets rich people what they want out of government but that’s only half of what makes them better resourced. The other half is time. People who are not struggling every day to get by have the time to dedicate to getting more of what they want.

Those of us who have to work for a living for 40 or more hours per week. Who have to commute to and from work. Who have to drive our children to sports practice and doctor appointments. Who need to rake our own leaves and stand in our own lines at the DMV and still come home and get dinner on the table, we run out of time to ask for what we need. We may have enough money for all the basics in life, but in order get that money we have sacrificed time.

And that is not an accident.

It is not an accident that real wages haven’t gone up in decades. It’s not an accident that people are expected to cram more work into the same number of hours as past generations. It’s no accident that workers are tethered to the office via text and email, that shift workers have uncertain schedules, and that we all have to live far from our jobs due to housing costs rising closer to where the jobs are.

This has all been done on purpose to keep us so busy and so tired and so desperate to keep our jobs that we don’t have time to take stock of the stark reality that we are one pink-slip away from ruin but we are lifetimes away from the American dream of being rich.

So, think back to what I said about the policy priorities of Democrats and Republicans. That Democrats are preparing to be poor, while Republicans are preparing to be rich. And think about your real prospects for wealth in your lifetime.

The n think hard about who will be there to support your actual needs in your actual future.

In his amazing book How To Be an Anti-Racist, Ibram X. Kendi defines an activist as someone with a record of power or policy change. He goes on to explain that changing minds is different than changing policy. He in no way says that changing minds is a bad thing or a weak thing. He just says it isn’t activism.

I had to have a long talk with myself after that because in my most flattering definitions of myself, I like to think that I am an activist. But if we use this standard, I stopped being an activist the day I said good-bye to my old job working in health care advocacy in 2011.

I don’t want to let go of my claims of activism but I have to admit I am not changing power or policy in my current role in society. I talk a lot. I share a lot on social media and on this little blog. I participate in a weekly podcast about politics. I read about current events until I want to scream. But I’m not changing anything except maybe some minds. I’m basically a pundit.

There is nothing wrong with being a pundit. Rachel Maddow is a pundit. Doing anything that makes me in any way similar to Rachel Maddow is a win for my self-image. But in terms of instigating real change, no. No, I don’t really do that any more.

This is an election year where the opportunities to play a role in changing the balance of power in Washington are going to be abundant. If I want to reclaim the mantle of activism – and I do – I need to leave the comfort of my keyboard and go into the big wide world and actually do something. Knock on doors. Stuff envelopes. Do phon-e and text-banking. Something, anything, that feels like a goal-oriented action with change as the ultimate outcome.

I’m going to start with one of my favorite small actions: post-carding. There’s a great organization called Postcards To Voters that has a system set up where you can get addresses and talking points to hand-write postcards to voters in other regions. Participants provide their own postcards and stamps and you can choose how many addresses you do at a time. In the past, I’ve written for candidates and ballot issues. Right now, they’re publicizing Vote By Mail registration in Florida. I really like being able to contact Dems in Florida for a voter turnout effort. That feels concrete and useful.

This year is going to require more activism than punditry, I think, and I need to get off my computer and into my community to do my part.

We have reached the magical time of the election cycle when every time I hear the words “Voters in Iowa” I want to scream curse words at the nearest Democratic Party official. In between the curse words would be the message “THE STAGGERED PRIMARY CALENDAR IS UNFAIR TO VOTERS IN LATER STATES!”

There is literally no sensible reason for states to hold primaries on different dates any more. It made sense when communications and transit systems involved stage coaches and hand-cranked printing presses. Today? It’s bullshit.

Yeah, maybe it’s nice for candidates to get to focus on one region at a time but if you’re in a region that votes after Iowa, half of the candidates won’t focus on you ever because they will be off the ballot before you even get a chance think about voting. All because Iowans looked at them and said “Nah.”

Think about it this way: if the party was a retailer selling groceries, it would be making all its national stocking decisions based on what people in Iowa buy. Imagine if no one in Iowa was into tofu so every grocer in America just stopped selling tofu, even in places where tofu historically sells like hotcakes. And all anyone would say is “Tofu didn’t sell in Iowa.” And you’d be like “But this is Maryland. We like tofu. Why can’t we have tofu?” And they’d say “Because it didn’t sell well in Iowa. So we cancelled tofu.”

THAT’S HOW THE PRIMARY WORKS! Iowans decides who the rest of us get to vote for by a process of elimination that has nothing to do with anyone outside of Iowa! Iowans reject candidates and the rest of us never get a chance to vote for them at all! And I’m still mad I never got to vote for Howard Dean because of it!

I’m sure the people of Iowa are very nice. Same with the people of New Hampshire. But I don’t want them winnowing down the field of candidates months before my state’s nominating contest. Their populations, their concerns, their priorities are not universal. But their influence in elections is incongruously vast.

The only way have have a truly intersectional primary is to have one slate of candidates that is unchanged from state to state. There are two ways to get that: change the the entire system to cap the duration of campaigns and dramatically reduce the amount of money that can be spent. Or set a single primary date for the whole country.

Because the way we do it now is outdated and unfair and it’s beyond time to fix that problem.

My grandfather, the late Dr. Paul Chodoff, was a respected psychiatrist and eminent thinker in his field. He was beloved as a clinician – his patients thought the world of him – and much admired by his colleagues. He was also one of the smartest people I ever met. Infuriatingly, he knew just how smart he was. He’d tell you all about it.

In 2002, he wrote a paper titled The Medicalization Of The Human Condition in which he argued that the field of psychiatry had over-stepped its mandate by relying too much on pharmaceutical remedies for mental issues. He suggested that some of the concerns that patients sought treatment for – anxiety, depression for example – didn’t always rise to the level of chronic and therefore were better treated with talk therapy and time than with medications. It was a thoughtful piece written based on his 50 years in practice as a psychiatrist.

And I am here tonight to tell you that I think he was wrong.

(Somewhere, all of my cousins and my sister are looking up from what they’re doing and thinking “I feel a great disturbance in the Force – as if someone said Pop-pop was wrong about something.” Fear not, cousins and siser. Pop-pop didn’t believe in an afterlife so he can’t seek retribution from the beyond without admitting he was wrong about that, too. I’m safe.)

So, here’s the thing I think my grandfather missed: the human condition sucks. It sucks so much that humans, for all of our history, have sought substances and activities that can distract us from the unbearable burden of living with a human consciousness.

Whether your low moments and negative feelings are chronic or episodic, they are low moments and you have to live within them whether you like it or not. Sheer force of will – your own or my grandfather’s – cannot blunt the effects of emotional pain. Eventually, we will all seek out a remedy. That remedy might be something as constructive as talk therapy, sure. Or it could be calling a friend to vent. It might be going out dancing. It might be binging really trashy tv. Some folks like religion for mental comfort. Others pick exercise, hobbies, art, or music. Some go for drugs and alcohol. Or! You could get a prescription for psychopharmaceuticals that fix mood issues like magic.

For the record, my grandfather’s escape mechanism was obsessive reading. He would not have considered it as such but the truth hurts, Pop-pop. And that’s the truth.

Anyway, the point of all of this is we all need help to get through life and no one should be ashamed of the help they get. As I have said before, mental health is an intersectional issue and it should be de-stigmatized and readily accessible for all of us.

Do what it takes to keep yourself operational and don’t let anyone tell you it’s weakness.