The Mortifying Ordeal of Life in 2025
what the heck guys
Hello Substack friends!
I hope you are keeping warm if you live in the Eastern - Midwestern United States. I hope your home didn’t burn down if you live on the West Coast. I hope you are doing well if you live in another country—and please know that, barring a few exceptions, I wish I was you right now!
The comedy album Inside by Bo Burnham was a musical staple for me in grad school. It was released in 2021 but largely explored Bo’s experiences during the early COVID-19 days of 2020. Every now and then, the album makes it back into my listening rotation because it is a perfect example of my generation’s sense of “gallows humor.”
“That Funny Feeling” (heralded by many as a millennial “We Didn’t Start The Fire”) is a wonderful overview of the album in my opinion, and I would recommend listening if you haven’t.
This is not the song that I have stuck in my head this morning, though. No, the Bo Burnham song that I have stuck in my head today is very appropriately and succinctly named “Shit.” The opening lines go like this:
“… How we feeling out there tonight?
Ha, ha, ha
Yeah
I am not feeling good”
All of this is set to a techno beat, which is honestly how the inside of my mind has sounded as I dig at my dry skin, pace around my house, don’t sleep, and feel too scatterbrained to work yet too keyed up to rest.
I tried to step away from news and social media surrounding the Trump inauguration—I even went so far as to ask my Instagram followers what their self-care plans and safety plans were—but when it came right down to it, I could not keep myself away from my phone.
I do not think I will ever forget the feeling of Trump signing day one orders to pardon 1,600 insurrectionists who participated in a siege on the United States Capitol in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, the official degree that transgender and gender non-binary people do not exist (they have, do, and always will), suspending the Refugee Resettlement Act (which has existed since 1980), restoring the death penalty, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, and withdrawing from the World Health Organization. You can read more about these executive orders here.
I will never forget texting my friends who are survivors to make sure they are taking care of themselves as a 26-time sexual abuser takes office again. Reaching out to my trans and non-binary friends to make sure that they make it through the despair of their identities and truths being publicly invalidated to thunderous applause. Calling my parents to see how federal hiring changes will impact my dad’s job and how changes in the process of applying for asylum will impact the family of Ukrainian refugees my mom has come to love as her own.
I wanted to scream or break something or perhaps jump out of a window . . .
. . . but none of that is productive.
Nothing will ever change if we roll over in despair.
I saw an Instagram post—perhaps my inability to stay off the internet, despite insisting that I would, is a moral failing—that said, “Resistance begins with a regulated nervous system.” (I tried to find it again to link the original post but could not). This is a tough but absolutely important truth to digest. We cannot begin to make a difference if we cannot think straight (or, in my case, sleep for more than two hours a night).
I FaceTimed with a friend from college for about two hours on the morning of inauguration day, and we spent a good bit of time talking about the Enneagram (I swear this is relevant; just bear with me). This friend and I love all things personality tests (and were perhaps two of the world’s biggest menaces back in the glory days of Buzzfeed Quizzes that would tell you things like what PopTart flavor you are).
One issue with any sort of self-index is that people often provide the answers they think they should give rather than the answers that are most truthful. As a result, I thought I was an Enneagram Two for a long time until I did some intense self-exploration in 2023 (back when I started writing this Substack, in fact) and realized that I am actually an Enneagram Nine through-and-through.
According to the Enneagram website, “Nines are creative and supportive but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts. Basic Fear: Of loss and separation. Basic Desire: To have inner stability and peace of mind.”
Oof. So that’s me.
I really, really like a peaceful life. I want things the way I want them, and I want to curl up on my couch with a book in a room full of people who get along and will never leave me. Conflict makes me want to vomit, and I have played the role of peacemaker/mediator for someone or other since the day I popped out of my mother’s womb.
And yet, there is a part of me that is fiery, bleeding-hearted, and angry as can be that cannot be explained by my Nine. This is where “wings” come in. You see, the Enneagram Nine sits right beside the Enneagram Eight, which is the type for the Princess Leias and Aelin Galathyniuses of the world. Eights are outspoken advocates, unashamed to dig in their heels and make a stink where necessary. 9w8s (me) have a little bit of this flavor in them and desire internal peace and external peace (even if it takes a little conflict to get there).
As the United States makes our way into the second Trump Administration (I hated typing those words), I have been thinking about how my 9w8 heart and mind will guide me forward. I want everything to be peaceful and for everyone to get along, but that does not work if everyone is not on equal footing (we as as a society have never been, but the playing field for marginalized communities is getting less, not more, level).
So what do we do?
There are people far more qualified than me to answer this question, but since this is my Substack here are my answers:
Read. Read, read, read. Read books of different genres. Read books by authors who are different from you. Read about hypothetical worlds that reflect our own. Read about what real people have gone through. Read, read, read. There is a reason why people who are more educated tend to vote more liberally and it is not indoctrination but access to different ideas and perspectives. And please support your local library. They do more than you know. (Side bar: here is an Instagram video with my suggested reading list for challenging times - but again please look to others and not just me for recommendations.)
Consider ways to become involved locally. While it may seem terrifying to watch what is unfolding across our country and the world and daunting to know how to make a difference, there are many, many things you can do to make your communities better. An excellent example of a person who has taken the initiative to make a change in my hometown is a friend who started an organization called MOCHA (Morgantown Coalition for Housing Action), which works to bridge gaps in resources and advocacy for unsheltered neighbors. This has involved facilitating mutual aid events and collecting over a thousand signatures to overturn an urban camping ban that would criminalize homelessness. Local organizations that are doing good work exist in all corners of the world.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you cannot find some way to get involved locally or do not have time to get involved locally and happen to have a little bit of extra money, there is an organization to which you can donate for pretty much any issue. I am personally quite fond of the Florence Immigrants and Refugee Rights Project, which has required support under every president (yes, not just Trump!) and will require support now more than ever. I have also heard it said that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that does not mean that we should not try. My husband and I have spent the last year plus buying local produce through Grow Ohio Valley, local food from Wheeling Public Market, and coffee beans from our neighbors at Tacet Coffee. There are some things that we simply have to purchase from Amazon or Walmart, but it does make us feel like we are living out our values when we shop local.
Build community. Okay, you guys might hate this one, and it might be a little bit controversial. If you belong to a group that has been harmed deeply and feel unsafe in the presence of Trump supporters, by all means take care of yourself first. Your safety and well-being is the most important thing. But if you are someone who is safe to continue talking to Trump-supporting family (I live in West Virginia; this is at least 50% of my family), then I implore you not to cut them out of your life entirely. Again, this is not for those who feel unsafe—if you feel unsafe with your family, I 100% support your decision to go no contact—but if you just want to shake them for their ideology, I ask that you instead consider staying. I do not follow Trump supporters in my personal online spaces (this is where I find my peace) and I often shy away from talking politics with family (there is that 9w8 in me), but who else will have these conversations with them if not me? Regardless of whether my family understands or accepts my point of view, I have to stay here and keep providing it. If you are white, who better to chip away at a relative’s racism than you? If you are cisgender, who better to chip away at a relative’s transphobia than you? I have known family friends who are staunch conservatives but then will absolutely go to bat for the immigrants and refugees they actually meet. I have known relatives who are ideologically homophobic (there’s no other way to say it) but will go to their granddaughter’s wedding and welcome her new wife into the family. It’s hard and it’s painful, but if you have the capacity to keep trying to have these hard conversations and open yourself up like this, it is, in my opinion, one of the only ways people might change their thinking.
I have been thinking a good bit about the TV show The Good Place, which reckons with many questions of moral philosophy and what it means to be a good person.
(Okay, specifically, I have been thinking about this GIF.)
I think that The Good Place is one of the best shows of this century, and in addition to thinking about how life lately feels like we are in “The Bad Place,” I have been thinking about one character’s discussion of the moral philosophy book by T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other. In one episode, a character named Chidi says:
“Why choose to be good every day if there is no guaranteed reward we can count on, now or in the afterlife? I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.”
And, in lieu of yesterday also being Martin Luther King Jr. Day and as a reminder to myself and others, I leave you with one more quote:
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."
Take care of yourselves and each other. I should probably go do some work for my day job now.
Alexa