I wasn’t going to write a post at all today. I had a post lined up by my friend Richard Bledsoe (whose book I put in first place yesterday, and regardless of how you feel about modern art you should read his book AND give his art a look. Here, my own taste froze in the baroque, but his art speaks to me and when I have money I intend to … okay, not make him rich, but buy him a lot of coffee. I think because his art is “real”. I don’t know how to explain it better.) But he sent me the post, and yesterday I opened the email and stared at it, and could see it had an attached document, but couldn’t tell HOW to get to it. This was in microsoft which I’ve been using since — oh dear — older son was in diapers.
Then this morning I had an email meltdown from a friend which was so uncharacteristic — she’s one of your good soldiers — that my brain clicked.
These were just the most obvious symptoms, but a lot of people around me have been losing their minds. Arguably more so than during the lockdowns, or at least in a completely different way, including raging libertarians who are panicking at government “shrinking too fast.”
And I realized I needed to write this. Because I need a good talking to, and as usual I’m going to give it to you guys. Why? Mostly because screaming at myself worries Dan and that’s bad for him.
So, sit down. Put down your rucksack. Take a load off those mud encrusted feet. I just made us some coffee, and it’s a 100% virtual King Harv’s (I need to order. I actually managed to run out before noticing) not the dirt and twigs you’re used to getting here in the trenches.
Now, take a deep breath. Another. Doesn’t that feel good? What? The stench getting to you? Well, sure, but you know, at this point the deaths are no longer happening. We’re fighting back. Smoke a cigarette. It will dull the smell, and again, here in virtual land, it has no bad effects.
Yes, the WWI imagery is intentional. I’ve also realized why it’s been so much on my mind.
What a month, no? And on the back of four years…. Well….
Look, guys, I’m going to say it again: Change kills. Even good change. People are as likely to drop dead of a heart attack after they get married as they are after they get divorced or widowed. Your body is a dumb beast. It doesn’t get “good and bad” it just gets “change.” And, ooh, boy, it hates change. Remember that our mind and body are perfectly tuned to the neolithic (evolution is that slow, yes, which is why I giggle at people that say kids are getting stupider or that people “no longer have the ability to–” whatever. That’s upbringing and culture. People don’t change that fast genetically.) And in the neolithic, when things changed very fast, either your game of choice had moved to other pastures leaving you and your tribe to starve, or the volcano had erupted, or them over there with the weird habits had just moved to your land and were trying to kill you and take your women (or kill your men and take you.)
Probably the worst change is one that comes after years and years of no change. Particularly bad no change. How do I put this? Um… the Bible, right? Whether you believe in it or not, it’s a foundational document of the West, so you probably know the story of the Israelites being delivered from Egypt, by the Lord’s strong arm that parted the Red Sea so they crossed dry shod, then drowned Pharaoh and his chariots and his horses and men. You know it, right? Well, I’m going to submit to you those people were walking wounded. And there were very good reasons for the generation that remembered being slaves to die off before they entered the promised land.
But I submit to you even without the sojourn in the desert, even if they’d been delivered dry-shod to Canaan by a mighty wind or something, they would have turned against Moses and tried to crawl back to slavery. In fact, there’s a very good chance it would have been worse and their culture and group would have fallen completely apart. Because the change would have been too great.
Again, tying back to World War I, it wasn’t the relentless charges into the machine gun fire that destroyed people’s minds. It was the hurry up wait hurry up wait, etc. You could go for weeks in the trenches, where it was relatively safe if you weren’t stupid enough to light a cigarette at night, and where your biggest dangers were dysentery and foot rot, and then there was the charge, and win or lose, it messed you up badly.
So, tying back to us, yeah, our situation is less — way less — physically dire than that of the people in the trenches. But psychologically, we have a lot in common.
I don’t know about you, but around three months of the Biden interregnum, I hunched my shoulders and went “I will survive this” and stopped resenting the endless showers of shit every day, where it felt like exactly the opposite of the sane or survival-enhancing was being done every single day. Our country was being stabbed to death with nail scissors, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. But this being Biden who, before he was demented was already an evil and spiteful piece of shit in human form, each stab came with a giggle and a humiliating insult too, all while his lackeys in the media told us he was the bestest, most humane and gentlemanly president ever. So, we endured.
I’m going to tell you right now, I wouldn’t have endured without having been vouchsafed (it wasn’t a vision, and it wasn’t words, it also wasn’t exactly a feeling, but from where I was and the …. what it was, I knew it came from the Author) the day before the 2020 lockdowns that we came out of this okay, and that the republic would be restored and “better than before at any time since the funding.” I’d have gone to pieces around 2022. As was, I’m embarrassed to confess how I often doubted the vouchsafing (I am a woman of very little faith) and lay awake at night wondering if I was the worst of traitors for stopping my hotheads from going boogaloo.
November was a relief, but I have to tell you, part of me still expected something awful to happen. Just less awful.
And then a month ago– At first there was popcorn. And I must tell you, though I am not happy with the situation in either Israel or the Ukraine, I’ve looked at what is going on, actually going on, and have hints of what Trump is seeing behind the scenes (not fully, of course, I don’t get briefings, alas) and what he’s doing might be the best that can be done. And domestically…. well, domestically… it’s all I’ve prayed for and more.
So why is there that sense of panic behind the eyes, why are some of you emailing me to tell me you’re tired of winning? Why are otherwise sensible people who are committed to liberty throwing themselves into an irrational fury on social media and telling us they voted for the scalpel, not the chainsaw?
That last one is actually a clue — and I’ll revisit this in the action points — the phrase gets repeated over and over again, in that exact formulation. The people I’m hearing it from are not leftist psy-ops operatives, but there is a psy-ops going on and that phrase is one that is being implanted, to fit into the unease in people’s minds, and be amplified. You have to learn to recognize psy-ops people, because explaining it to you will take more than a post, let alone a paragraph in this one. (Yes, I’ll do it, if you insist.)
And yes, I do get that almost all of us either have a job in the periphery of the government or have someone close to us who does and whose jobs are now in jeopardy, and people need to live, feed the kids, pay mortgage, and no matter how much they want to cut government, a lot of people are panicking.
The extent of the upheaval, how far cutting government affects everything? That’s the problem. Right there. The government has been swallowing the nation. And the government doesn’t generate wealth, regardless of what the left thinks. It only consumes it.
We HAVE to cut government, because otherwise the nation is going to collapse. The urgency of the need is not just because there are elections in 2026 but also because I can read between the lines of official reports and if you can you know the nation is already collapsing. Hell, if you have adult kids you know how bad it is. For all the “kids these days” jobs are scarce, pay like shit, and the kids are crafting survival out of bailing wire and spit. IF they launch at all, which a lot of young men don’t. Yes, men specifically. But for all that, the women can’t marry if the men are hiding in the basement, and we’re fast reaching the Biblical thing where (quoting from memory pardon me) in the end times “four women will lay hold of the same man and say ‘we’ll support ourselves, only call us by your name and remove this oprobium from us.'” The government has sucked the economy dry and because economy is how we live, it’s now sucking everything else.
I suspect before this is done, we will pray the chainsaw was enough. Because I think there are entire areas where dynamite and depth charges will be needed to clear the snarl.
Sure, people are going to find themselves cast adrift, and there are going to be people looking for work, where there is none, and trying to…. craft life out of bailing wire and spit. The kids have an advantage there. they’re used to doing it.
IF this is done properly — so far seems to be — and if we are in time — I think we are. The vouchsafing thing — then the period of total confusion and people scrambling to survive will be brief. Fortunately it’s looking like it will hit Spring and Summer, by design or fortuitous chance. Fortuitous because while heat can kill, in the US climate cold is the greater danger, and disruption in anything that might disrupt those systems make me shudder. (Calm down. I don’t expect the systems to be disrupted unduly. It’s just a possibility when supply chains are redirected/cast adrift.) And the cutting back of regulations and the strangling bind of excessive taxation on the economy will make us take off like a rocket… to Mars. Honestly I think the biggest hold back will be people calming down enough to take advantage of the opportunities. In that spirit, I’m going to stop blathering and give you action points to help, okay? And if I miss some (I will miss some) feel free to put coping strategies in the comments.
1 – Calm down. Realize your brain and nerves lie to you. You’re panicking because things are changing too fast, not because the change is bad. It only feels bad, because there’s a lot of it in a very short time. When you feel yourself starting to panic, stop away from the news. I don’t cotton to “touch grass” — there’s insects in that grass, people, and I’m allergic to every single one of them — go and do something real, with your hands if you can, something that prepares you better for any upheaval that might or might not hit you. I don’t know. Cook some meals and freeze them. Go organize your files. If all else fails, do as Jerry Pournelle advised in 2012: go make your house really clean. The environment influences your mind, and an orderly environment WILL help.
2- Don’t make any sudden decisions. This is usually told to people who have just gotten married/divorced/widowed/had their house burn down/moved. DON’T MAKE ANY SUDDEN DECISIONS. Because you’re as likely to choose wrong as not. You might think you’re all “with it” and functioning fine, but you’re not, not really. You are actually reacting, not acting independently. And part of the reason you’re reacting is because you’re trying to create calm. Any calm. And destruction is a sort of calm. There’s no peace like the grave. Your instincts know that. So, don’t let them rule. No, you haven’t had a personally disastrous thing happen, but fast change all feels the same to the caveman in your head. DON’T. JUST DON’T. It might feel super-urgent to sell your house and move across the country; to change jobs; to get it on with the new guy/chick; to get a divorce. Don’t. If it’s the right thing, it will still be there in six months. Chill. Kick back. Go do something else.
Now you might have to move, because you lost your job. Or your spouse really did die. Or…
If you can, do it slowly. I know it will not always be possible, but if you can, punt back to rental somewhere quiet that you have pleasant associations with, while you get yourself together. (Which now I think about it is what the Hoyts have been doing for 3 years and change now. Hanging out in a quiet place where we already had friends. The overwork and other insanity hasn’t helped, but the slowing down and being recluses a while has.)
Don’t make sudden decisions unless absolutely needed to avoid bankruptcy or death!
3- Beware psy-ops. I know you feel panic at the back of your head, because if you’re a regular reader here, you’re a political addict. BUT the panic isn’t real. Part of it is that you can’t even keep up with the news, and you’re afraid. You’re used to bad things being done from above, and you fear it will happen again.
I won’t lie. Some of Trump’s decisions WILL be bad. He’s human, for crying outloud. Which is why having too much power in the president is a bad idea, and I hope that will get fixed. BUT for now… well, he had four years to think about it.
All of the “panic now” I’ve seen have been very slick psy-ops. I have to do posts on it, but for now rules of thumb.
a) If someone is trying to get your to URGENTLY respond, they’re not your friend. b) If they supposedly want you to “stop” or redirect Trump — could you stop the lockdowns? no? Then how can you stop this? — what it’s actually aimed at is turning people against the administration. c) if you hear the same phrase/sentence repeated over and over? It’s a psyops.
You can either dive down and find where it’s bullsh*t (Did you know Trump did NOT tell Ukraine they were responsible for the war and all his comments were sensible-ish? No? I didn’t either till this morning.) Or just ignore it. The chances of a psy-ops having got hold of the truth aren’t zero, but they’re not super high, either.
4- PREPARE PREPARE PREPARE. Okay, maybe not a case of keeping your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, though to be fair, I wouldn’t say that’s not needed, since the left is losing its mind.
SO PREPARE PREPARE PREPARE.
At the most basic level, prepare as though you expected a really bad storm that can last a month or more.
I have a friend who thinks a serious destruction of global supply chains means the end of civilization. I think it’s because he comes from the East where things are more depleted and densely packed. But even there, I think it’s because he grew up in a land of unlimited abundance where people don’t fully grasp the things other countries have survived.
Look, my friend might be right. But family history tells me he’s not. Even if things go completely tits up, the US will almost for sure survive, and other countries surprisingly will too. And we probably won’t even lose that much population.
Family history? Well, the “in living memory” thing. Portugal is a tiny country, and by the fourteenth century they’d eaten most of the edible wildlife that was bigger than a pidgeon into extinction. It’s changed some, partly because of feralized pigs, but that is not important for the early twentieth century. When the country went bankrupt. Not a little bit. Like, bankrupt-bankrupt. Like, money wasn’t worth anything levels of total fuckuppedness. I grew up with stories of entire families (some of which went on to be wealthy beyond all reason) surviving by eating soup made of weeds pulled from the ditches. I suspect, though no one talks about it, a lot of people ate rat. I know for a fact a lot of people ate sparrow (which can’t be eaten into extinction, it turns out.) And I suspect the frogs weren’t safe either. I’ve also read enough memoirs of people fishing for their supper and going hungry for days when the fish wouldn’t bite.
The US, regardless of what you think, has way more resources than that. Park geese alone can feed entire small towns for months. Deer are a nuisance. You might think there’s not enough of them, but I bet you there are. Again, people have survived on less. Hell, Parisians survived on rat for some time during WWI. We’ll live.
Though, returning to “prepare”: I found out — why didn’t he ever tell me these stories before — while I was in Portugal how our family survived in “style”. As in, while other kids were on the edge of starvation, my dad and his brothers and sister were at risk of being pudgy, and all of them grew taller than their generation. Apparently my great grandmother was as paranoid as I am. In fact, the more I hear about her, the more I wish I’d known her. There’s a “resonance” there. She kind of sensed what was coming, and ordered a lot of flour of various kinds — corn and rye among them — and she set up to raise a lot of chickens. She learned to make bread. She reduced the flowerbeds to a minimum and grew diversified vegetables (on that Portugal has the advantage having a better climate than most of the US.) She pulled the family through on bread, eggs and vegetables, with extra eggs to trade for stuff like milk.
So, look ahead, find what you can do to make your survival sustainable. (Now a ton of us can’t raise chickens. But people give courses on how to hunt and how to fish. And you sure as shooting can can and buy dry protein and a few sacks of rice that you store properly. It won’t be the best diet but you won’t die.)
It will give you something to do. And hey, maybe things will turn around so fast you wont’ need it.
5- Don’t berate yourself.
I know a lot of us feel super-indulgent and stupid when we aren’t charging forward 100% of the time. And panic makes that worse. But these aren’t normal times.
I haven’t cleaned my house in over a month. Now some of you are going “so”? Well, I normally clean every week. Partly because we’re ADD AF which means left uncleaned/unorganized things get piled on every surface, and they don’t make any sense there, so then neither of us can deal with it. We start living in “hoarder house”. This is not good for anyone. To make things worse I’m allergic to household dust, and my asthma and eczema go crazy if I don’t clean at least every two weeks.
Well, I haven’t, and it’s because I’ve not been able to get my mind/body in gear to do it. That changes today, because it has to. But right now I can’t even THINK with the mess.
And I’m mad at myself for it. And I shouldn’t be. Because–
Well, I know I’ve also been sick, and my thyroid went nuts (or the opposite of nuts that means it decided to go on vacation) but seriously. Things have been weird. Like, I can’t sleep enough. Always feel “off”, forget how to do things that are obvious (like find the attachment in an email) and am so tired by nighttime that sometimes I read my contributions to Instapundit with some interest in the morning, because I don’t remember anything I typed.
My book that has been finished since October hasn’t been fully edited by me yet, and hasn’t gone to betas yet, and now part one won’t come out till April, and argh.
My substacks are dusty and probably everyone is unsubscribing.
Like that. And I’m having real trouble giving myself grace. But I also know this is not my normal slacking off.
I bet a lot of you if not all are going through that.
Well, give yourself some grace. I suspect you’re at very little risk of indulging forever, but for now, don’t berate yourself too badly. You’re walking wounded. Remember that. Forgive yourself a bit.
6- This will be even harder than giving yourself grace, but pamper yourself a bit.
Look, last time I sent through hell without galoshes (it happens on the regular, because of the professions we’re in, but also because I’m a dumbass on social interactions) in 2018 when I managed to get fired twice in a week and other rapid change (not all of it bad but some VERY bad) was happening in the family, I became obsessed with “soft and warm.”
This week I’ve been unpacking boxes that got mixed up with the library boxes in the climate controlled unit. Let’s say the local goodwill is getting a lot of soft, warm coats. I don’t know how many bodies I thought I had, but it’s like I went through “More soft! More warm!” (Fortunately most of my buying was in thrift stores, so the expense wasn’t crazy, but really. I’ve donated twenty indoor-coats and at least as many outdoor coats, and I’m still finding boxes.)
Now, that particular obsession was…. odd. But I guess coats felt more “needed” to me than oh fancy tea; nice drawing paper, a trip tot he zoo. Because those felt outright indulgent. And time off? But couldn’t I tell I needed to earn more money?
Yeah, whipping yourself and yelling at yourself won’t fix this. (Though if that’s your kink, who am I to judge.)
Take time and do things you like and enjoy. Try to keep it small and inexpensive, unless you are very well off. (At least one billionaire used to read here on the regular. Don’t know if he still does. If he does I’d like to point out he doesn’t contribute to the fundraisers. Probably thinks it would spoil me. I’d like to assure him it wouldn’t. Just pay off the kids student loans and maybe allow us to take A vacation. Nothing fancy. Let’s say a week by the sea.)
Just allow yourself to buy the fancy tea. The good coffee (as soon as I’ve cleaned, I’m going to order.) Buy a bar of chocolate if you can indulge, and have a square a day, at a set time, and really enjoy it. Go for a walk, even if you really “don’t have time.” Pet the cats. Or the dog. Even someone else’s cats or dog. Buy the fancy yarn. Start a new crochet project, and use it as a reward. Sit down for ten minutes and listen to music. Really listen. Read a book. Indulge.
In one of the worst and most broke times in our lives, my husband bought me a coffee table book on the work of Leonardo DaVinci. Just flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures did more for me than all the crazy striving I was also doing.
7- I know there’s a sense of “I should be working, because I CAN” that’s militating against this. I understand it. the hunching your shoulders under the shower of shit years didn’t exactly lead to productivity. And it wasn’t just me. A lot of writers and artists went silent. And now we’re waking up and feel like we must do all the things, all at once.
Don’t.
Look, I get it. I’m trying to edit, redo my covers, investigate how to do earcs linked to my (paid) substack, establish my own shop (I need to figure out platforms) get out of KU exclusive, redo my blurbs, re-typeset all the books (And the fact atticus is being a butt doesn’t help anyone.)
But after a while that’s just over committing and stopping everything, combined with self flagellation and not giving yourself a moment to recoup.
TEMPER YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Yes, I know that’s really hard for writers and artists, and also we’re finely tuned instruments to what’s going on in the world. that’s why we do what we do. So we know there’s urgency.
Now I think about it, this is probably also affecting investors like BGE and I’d be shocked if it’s not affecting a lot of the rest of you.
You feel the earthquake, and you want to run. You want to do ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME.
We’re in a time and place where history that had been held back has broken the dam, and we’re producing more history per day than entire years in the past 50 or maybe more. And of course you want to do all the things.
Secure your mask before helping others, or even doing all the things. Give yourself grace, pamper yourself and PACE YOURSELF.
FESTINA LENTE. Make haste slowly. Rejoice that the creativity, the urgency are back, but don’t rush. Pace yourself.
Humans are persistence predators. Pursue your missions at a sustainable pace and relentlessly. You’ll get there. And you won’t be dead when you arrive.
Now go back to the trenches. Yes, you can take the cup of virtual coffee. We’ll get through this. You got this. Go deal.
According To Hoyt 