some years, muscadel faces down frost

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh | Sometimes

---

I refused to follow the process of the election this time around. I didn't read predictions, I didn't watch returns, I didn't read the news; none of them could tell me anything I needed to know, and after 2016 I knew how little they could tell me at all. I have a group of friends with slack space where people popped in with big news and that was plenty. I told G he couldn't tell me anything at all about it; I couldn't take it while it was happening. The play-by-play was too gruesome.

Now it's at least nominally over (although I carry some trepidation about what's going to happen between now and January), and oh, my friends. I didn't even realize I'd been holding my breath for five years until I was suddenly able to breathe again. And while I'm not relaxed, I feel like I see the faintest filament of a way forward that isn't disaster.

I continue to struggle with the knowledge of people I know, people I care about, who wanted the things that were happening to continue. I struggle with knowing they willingly and with the knowledge of experience continued to choose something so violent. I struggle with knowing they don't feel there's anything to be fixed, and I struggle deeply and fundamentally with not understanding why. But I am comforted by the celebrations, by the energy, by the hope that we have carved a narrow path in a mountainside. By even lip service given to people who've never before been given lip service. I am comforted that, "a people sometimes will step back from war."

I feel a tiny ember of hope again, in the ashes of a fire I hadn't even really realized had gone so thoroughly cold. I'm taking a moment to try to coax it back into a blaze.

​Armies of One | Siri AgrellIt’s important to realize that we are also participating in collective action when we don’t think we are: through our choices, our actions and inactions, our preferences.

The individual is political, we must be reminded.

Our personal decisions are constantly guiding the arc of history. We act individually but our collective patterns tell a story, not just when we vote or don’t vote but in the things we buy or don’t buy, the stores we frequent, the content we consume, the heroes we lionize, the horrors that we barely glance at. 

Together we are always making our interests and our preferences known to those in positions of power, and we all individually guide the hands of our leaders, by demonstrating to them what we think is okay or acceptable.

No one leads (well or badly) without the tacit approval of the masses. Leaders are constantly assessing where the public is at — where each one of us is at — and what we’re okay with.

And so today, and every day, it is our job to lead them well.

• A series of celebrations: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
• The hosts of Reply All never want to stop falling down internet rabbit holes | AV Club
• "I want a house with a crowded table / And a place by the fire for everyone / Let us take on the world while we're young and able / And bring us back together when the day is done"
• My social media presentation is now available directly via my YouTube channel. The slides and transcript are still available using the form I linked last week, or just email me. I'm hoping to make more things like that soon, because it was a lot of fun and I'm learning a lot about video editing.