Random “I’ve been to all the therapy” lesson some folks might helpful right now —
Your outrage is currency, and you can spend it on stuff.
Example. You see a headline. (lol they’re all bad) Your choices are to hit reshare and say SEE THIS IS BAD HERE IS WHY.
Which arguably does nothing. Especially not **in the moment the hullaballoo is trending** The people who agree it is bad agree it is bad. The people who do not will not. The people who weren’t paying attention probably still aren’t paying attention (at least not in a way that is going to respond to social media reshares in a heated moment)
BUT! Your other option is to step into the real world and take an embodied action.
Example:
I was ticked off at the gross misrepresentation of some MLK quotes and speeches yesterday, so I puttered over to The Bookworm Omaha and purchased myself a big honkin’ copy of several of his key speeches for my personal review. I’ve not read most of them in their entirety since undergrad (context is key friennnndss)
This actually worked out great because someone in my network reached out to me shortly after for my sage history nerd advice about how to have an **in person conversation** with someone they know about some complicated “you learned history all wrong” topics.
Cool. I now have a new book, a local bookstore has a couple new pennies, and a neighbor has a few new words and phrases in their toolkit to create change in **their** network.
Am I mad at the news? Yes.
But our power lies in responding to what we can DO in our embodied world, not in what we can say about what others are saying.
(I know this seems horrifyingly paradoxical because I’m saying the things about how people are saying the things but I swear if you just get enough layers into that fuck uppery there’s a comprehensive picture here that turns DO SOMETHING from a Michelle Obama tee shirt into a community survival technique and heerrreee weeee areee)