Reboot

The past month has not been good. Having an established professional and volunteer life in the political realm, my anxiety levels have been off the charts since Election Day. It's heartening to see and hear so many political and previously not-so-political people stepping up and taking action, resisting, fighting the good fight, etc. And I'm slowly getting there.

I volunteered at work to be sent to Nevada in the weeks before the election to help the Silver State turn blue and to help elect the first Latina to the U.S. Senate. I've been clinging to those two successes in the past month.

But I still have to change the radio channel when NPR plays interview clips of the soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief. I still haven't entirely cleaned my apartment post-GOTV. I don't have the energy to plan my annual holiday party this year. I had mild anxiety travelling to Michigan to visit my sister, nieces, and nephew for Thanksgiving: they live one suburb away from where a student hung a noose in a middle school bathroom.

A few friends posted this article about surving the next four years on Facebook, and it sparked something in the depression-and-anxiety-riddled recesses of my brain. Numbers 6 (Prioritizing Mental & Physical Health), 7 (Making Lists), and 8 (Finding Positivity Every Day) in particular spoke to me.

I agreed to summit Mt Baker next August, so that's a good fitness goal I can steer toward. As is the Seahawks 12K I think I finally want to run. I'm good at calendaring and making lists; it helps me find order and peace in the chaos around me. And recently, some glad tidings of great joy have surfaced.

Yesterday was one of the most exciting days of my life as a Seattle sports fan: the Seattle Sounders won the MLS Cup in a nail-biting final that took them all the way to PKs. (I always pace during PKs, even if I don't care about the teams involved. PKs are nerve-wracking.) It was such an amazing journey for the team... and though I was quite literally hyperventilating after extra time, for the first time in months it wasn't because of anything political.  It was a fantastic win, and my season ticket seatmate and I got to spend it together in a low-key atmosphere. Then I headed off to my home neighborhood to celebrate the milestone birthday of an old friend, and spent the rest of the night with good people I've known forever, who are basically family.

Today, I went to the small regional airport to welcome the team back home, cheering and chanting as they brought the MLS Cup off a plane. If thousands of fans cheering wildly and celebrating for two days straight isn't something to recognize as positivity, I don't know what is. Everyone was so happy and proud and excited, and in a bittersweet way it was what Election Night should have been.

Over Thanksgiving, while watching the MLS Western Conference final with my nieces and nephew, I noticed that 9-year-old Harmony was silent and not getting excited about the game. I told her, "Isn't it exciting? The Sounders can win this! I believe!" She looked sad and answered, "But Tia, you said the same thing about Hillary Clinton." (I did. I called her, jubilant and hopeful, right before heading out to the E-Day parties.)

I hope I (and frankly, our country) can restore trust and hope to my little niece's eyes. (At some point, my sister and I might need to talk to her about the differences between sports wins and political wins, and which of those scenarios we actually have a chance of influencing.)

So maybe this 12-year-old blog on a very outdated blog site (2017 goal: finally get around to purchasing a domain name) can help me re-center myself.

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
    Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

 (73rd quatrain, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald translation)

The District sleeps alone tonight

So many friends hyped up The Hunger Games trilogy that I finally had to read the first book. The plot was well-known: in a post-apocalyptic North America, two teenagers from different districts are sent as "tributes" to the Capitol to battle to the death.

For starters, it was written in the present tense, which I hate. It was also predictable, even if the warrior-reality-TV-survival-romance plot was complicated.

I liked the concept, though: the oppressed districts struggle to survive under a brutal regime. The reader can sense a revolution coming in a future book. (Hmmmm, I wonder who will lead it?)

And I loved the fact that traditional gender roles were reversed: the heroine, Katniss, is the fearless archer, hunter, and provider for her family. Her fellow tribute (and predictable love interest) Peeta is the baker's son who is at home in the kitchen; he's the blindly besotted one, wounded and helpless, who has to be rescued by the heroine. It was Girl Power to the extreme. Awesome.

Then I saw the just-released movie. It was remarkably faithful to the book, perhaps because the author helped with the adaptation. Though I'm split on the merits of the few differences between them, I think I liked the movie a little better than the book.

One scene in particular that is very different was the aftermath of the death of Rue, a fellow tribute whom Katniss befriends. While I loved that part of the book (which has District 11's residents scraping together to send Katniss a loaf of bread), the scene in the movie was more powerful (District 11 salutes her , then riots). Not ashamed to say I was crying from the scene where Rue dies, straight through the riots.

The other thing that's missing from the movie is Katniss' own conflicted thoughts about Peeta, her fellow tribute. In the book, it's a little clear she has a subconscious crush on him; in the movie, it's not. Also lost in the movie is Katniss forming a bond with Cinna, her stylist.

The additions in the movie, though, were brilliant: unlike the book, we see exactly how the Capitol manipulates the Hunger Games for ratings and to control the Districts.

The Atlantic had a great analysis of the movie in terms of the Occupy movement and the 99%. So it's hard not to correlate current affairs to the book's development, each time the tributes or the residents of the poorer, outlying districts need basic things like food and health care.

Meanwhile, in the real District of the real Capitol, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act tomorrow....

La ville, la vie, la veille

I lovelovelove this video. The song is so beautiful too, no matter how slightly objectionable (and probably bad for me right now) the lyrics are.

But it's Paris, the eternal city for love, in a highly temporal world. I'm drawn to the bittersweet melody and the single-camera viewpoint that simultaneously moves forward but flashes back.

In unexpectedly related news, the #OccupyOakland protestors have managed to shut down the Port of Oakland. (How can a proud Seattleite not hear that and think of the 1919 General Strike?) Meanwhile, I have friends at #OccupySeattle, where earlier today SPD pepper sprayed some demonstrators.

It feels like the eve of something big, the proverbial crossroad where you choose to be a part of history or not. But then, maybe it's just the effect of the rain tonight.

May we live in interesting times, indeed.

They don't love you like I love you

I found myself having to give a glowing introduction at a recent community screening for a documentary I hadn't yet seen. As it turns out, Gerrymandering was a good primer on the use and abuse of drawing political boundaries in America. It does a pretty fair job of pointing out that both Republicans and Democrats have redrawn political maps to their own advantage. And it did an equally fair job of pointing out that while gerrymandering has historically been a tool to break up and disenfranchise blocs of voters (African Americans, Latinos) or even individuals (challengers to incumbents), it has also been a good way to elect people that would otherwise never have a chance at winning in existing districts (African Americans in the South, for instance).

The film heavily favors independent commissions as the solution to creating a fair redistricting process: it lauds Iowa's existing (and extraordinarily geeky) process and tells the story of California's successful 2008 ballot measure.

And because I nerded out two years ago over the Washington State redistricting board game, I could barely contain myself at the screening when the film highlighted the USC Annenberg Center's online redistricting game.

In an effort to gerrymander (of sorts) my own brain, I read a book recommended by a friend. The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques had lots of great tips for breathing exercises and getting out of the mental ruts and agonizing, circular thought patterns that characterize anxiety. (On the other hand, it also had a lot of fairly unhelpful tips too.) And I appreciated the chapter on neurology that explains some of the basic science behind anxiety.

At some points, I started to have minor hyperventilation episodes just reading about some situations and realizing I exhibit some of the same mental loops and behavior patterns. In the end, though, I'm glad I read the book.

Even though the author (a practicing psychologist) favors management techniques independent of medication like SSRIs or SNRIs, I'm actually grateful for the drugs. I like the idea of "using your brain to change your brain" by overcoming destructive and debilitating thoughts caused (in part) by chemical imbalances, but I also understand how drugs work on the same neurotransmitters. With or without either techniques or prescriptions, or using a combination of both, managing anxiety so that it doesn't overcome you is still a difficult and sometimes exhausting challenge.