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Negative Trump news
I’m thinking of keeping some sort of timeline, maybe in the form of links to record all the things happening that are problematic with a Trump presidency. I’m not sure I can keep maintaining it but I think it might be good ammunition when I come up against people (mainly family) who don’t understand my views. I might make this a page on this blog or maybe create another page with a different url….I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t already started something like this. I guess I need to work on recording these stories as I see them, either in a document file to be uploaded later or directly to an online page. Come to think of it,
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Despondency
It was another night with not much sleep. I stayed up until I was so tired I was sure I would fall asleep. And I did sleep for a couple hours but woke up and had to force myself back to sleep. It still wasn’t enough but I think it will get me through the day.
While I am incredibly angry that Trump was elected, that’s not really the source of my despondency. When I made the decision to cut off all conversation about politics with much of my family was when it became obvious that the problem for us is a fundamental difference in our views. There’s just no way I can bring someone else around to my thinking because I see the world so differently and I always have. I’ve been made to feel a traitor to family and country because I don’t agree with what most of them think. I have never been all that great at persuasion so it’s not even like I made any real attempt to change minds within this group. My main goal had always been to call out lies and misinformation but it didn’t make any difference and just increased the gulf between them and me. The funny thing is I ran across two articles in the past couple of weeks with more reasonable arguments against Hilary as president. Sadly I never saw anything like this from those trying to sway my opinion.
The worst part of all, though, is the meanness that comes along with these differences. It was bad enough to see all the name-calling of anyone with any association with liberals or liberal views. Some of these posts on social media were directed at me specifically and at me within a tiny group of family members who didn’t see things the same. But the worst thing I saw was after the result was announced and there was much mockery of those supporting Hilary. It was uncalled for. If Hilary had won and the conservatives had done this I would have been equally upset. It just made me feel that we are at a low point in humanity when there is so little regard for other humans, especially those different from us. I say this from a point of considerable privilege as a white person living in a western country.
On top of this I was also very dismayed to see reports of non-peaceful protests occurring. If these reports are true then I am truly disappointed. At the same time I do imagine that had Hilary won, there would have been not just protests but widespread riots throughout the country. This was a big source of anxiety for me even if she had won. Sigh…
Meanwhile, it’s a matter of moving on in some way at this point. I can’t change what’s happened so it’s important to brace myself to deal with the fallout. For the time being I plan to keep some distance from most of my family. That said, this was made a bit difficult because one of those people just happened to have a birthday yesterday. I really wanted to stay silent at this time but I wasn’t going to be ignore a birthday just because I was feeling angry…it’s not like it’s this person fault to have a birthday…of course, this person was really happy so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Sigh!
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There were kangaroos
It’s been a long and anxiety-filled nightmare of a day. I know I’m among many around the world feeling the same and I guess there is some comfort in not being the only one. But it really was difficult. I think for the first time all the networks here had rolling coverage throughout the morning and into the afternoon. I don’t normally watch television much during the day but it was hard to break away from. The Scientist sent me off to refill a prescription in late morning and it was a case of taking up way too little time. When I returned I made the decision to get out of the house and away from media as much as possible. My destination was our local Whiteman Park to do a long bit of walking while listening to music on my phone.
This should have been simple enough but I realised just about the time I reached the entrance to the park that I’d left my earphones at home. I often can zone out while walking so the only course of action was to return home and retrieve the earphones. It’s not that it’s far away but it’s tedious to take the time to do that trip again. Just before noon I arrived at the park and found decent parking without having to weave through the many parking lots around the village centre. Once there I applied sunscreen and then set off. I realise it would have been more effective to do the sunscreen at home but better late than not at all.
My walk was on the longest trail, which as a short and long version. I’d done the short version, albeit in a long way (after taking a wrong turn) on Saturday but today I wanted to do a lot of walking. For the most part the walk wasn’t eventful. took along my camera and took lots of photos and listened to music. I tried to listen to a Crowded House album that I find pretty soothing to hear. Sadly I just wasn’t able to zone out even though the music was pleasing when I wasn’t distracted by angry thoughts. Once that finished I moved to an Augie March album that I’ve been listening too regularly on walks. It’s got some amazingly beautiful music but the subject matter can be rather unsettling. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Strangely I found this music worked a lot better for me and the album runs over an hour so it kept me going for longer.
But despite the improvement the effect of music on my nerves, I was still quite agitated and often found myself in various states of mind that unpleasant. My stomach had been churning all this time and I’d been unable to eat anything all day. Still I didn’t feel hungry and I wasn’t even tired from walking after several kilometres.
A brief relief came when I came across some kangaroos near the Kangaroo Flats station on the park’s railway line. At first I only saw a couple but there were actually at least half a dozen within my sights. I even managed to take several photos and my trouble thought escaped for that minute or two that I was there. It was a rather blessed relief in a sense to feel the weight lifted.
The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful. I finished one trail and then went down another pathway to another part of the park. In the end I walked over nine kilometres and still didn’t feel very weary at the end of it aside from a bit of discomfort on the ball of my foot which was already irritated by too much friction on another walk.
I did eventually get a sort of appetite after forcing myself to eat a few nuts I keep in the car for emergency purpose (hunger sickness). And now it’s late at night again and I don’t even feel all that sleepy even though I got very little sleep last night. Hopefully I will be tired enough to sleep anyway tonight.
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Relief
After checking many times in the past week, I can confirm my absentee ballot was received. So glad my vote will be counted.
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Absentee voting
I told a bit of a white lie last week when I told certain family members that I have already voted. It actually didn’t get sent off until yesterday. This time I was sent an email with pages to print out for the ballot and the signed form that has to be included with it. It wasn’t too hard to do although I ended up doing a bit of cutting and pasting of address and envelope labels. Actually the worst part was trying use packing tape to stick the labels onto the envelopes since it was hard to find the end it took some time to get the tape without it splitting. It cost me almost $3 to send it from here, which seems a lot more expensive than the last time I did this. The previous time they sent me pre-printed information by mail and had a smaller envelope that wasn’t covered with tape. :)
I was hoping that Game Fanatic would vote too, but it’s pretty much impossible for him because he doesn’t have a last place resided in the US. In some states children can use the parent’s voting address but that’s not the case for Texas. I now regret changing my address to Texas because North Carolina does allow it.
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Politics and family
I admit to more or less blowing my top a couple days ago after seeing the umpteenth post on my Facebook feed about the current US election. Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with the posts if there was anything valid in them. But they almost always tend to be stuff spouted from some right-wing news group and almost always full of inaccuracies. What tipped me over the edge were the ones about the woman from the beauty pageant saying how much of a gentleman Trump was at the time. And the one where it listed several good things Trump has done, Apparently this makes Trump a good guy. Sigh. It’s interesting that I don’t see those from the opposite view posting such vitriolic material.
I went into a mad fury, replying to the ones that most incensed me. In hindsight, it was truly a waste of time. The ones posting are almost always family members. It’s been said to me that I just don’t understand what’s really happening back home because I am not there. Because, you know, we live in a backwater here in Australia. I’ve been told that I don’t have respect for the military and veterans in the past just because I don’t believe that they should be elevated above everyone else just because they are veterans. I don’t get this deifying veterans business that seems to happen so much back home. I don’t disrespect them but they aren’t the only ones who do good things for the country. It’s baffling.
The reality after much back and forth on a number of posts is that it seems the message I come away with on reading or viewing something is obviously totally different than what certain others in my family see. The most telling example is I can read a Snopes article debunking something and see all the sources attributed and another person will just see that one source mentioned that isn’t going to prove anything and claim that Snopes isn’t to be trusted even though this particular information may be presented more as background than the fact check.  In any case, it seems that most people already have a very firm opinion and it isn’t likely to be changed by anyone sharing yet another “proof”.
For years, I avoided engaging in discussion about politics with many family members because it was obvious no good would come of it. But then I was criticised for avoiding this and so sometimes did engage. Sadly, the time has come to return to that rule because it’s been proved again and again that no good comes from this sort of discussion. We are all just too entrenched in our views and it feels as though nothing I can attempt to convey will ever get through and nothing presented to me is valid enough to ever change my view.
On a related note, I happened to see an NPR article that went through various issues in this election and the views of four candidates (including the Libertarian and Greens candidate). To me the only real choices are the major parties since there’s no way of voting for a minor party without having no say on the final outcomes. This is where I find the Australia preference system works far better because a minor candidate can be chosen by listing which candidates to choose if the first doesn’t win. Anyway, it’s funny because I haven’t seen too much posted about most of these issues in recent months so I kind of forgot about them. Not surprisingly, my views were fairly close to those of Clinton, so I think I can feel fairly assured that I am choosing correctly for myself when I vote.
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Shift in emotions
Before I related our loss of Rhianna, I mentioned how I had spent a couple days feeling really good and energetic. It’s a shame it was so short-lived but it seems events conspired against me after that.
We woke on Saturday to the news frenzy surrounding the Paris attacks, The event itself is horrific enough, not to mention over attacks in various parts of the world in the days around it. But then there was the aftermath of people lacking compassion for fellow human beings and being selfish. I sadly must say there are members of my family and friends who fall into this category and it left me very much in despair to know they felt like they did. I ended up in a seething rage for a couple of days. Part of me wanted to carry on but it is an exhausting and painful experience so I decided I had to close it down because I couldn’t sustain those feelings for long.
I didn’t have a plan on how to do this so my mission was to find a way to calm that feeling of rage. I did this by listening to music, disengaging from certain social media websites and doing some breathing exercises and relaxation. It was not necessarily in this order. I think the breathing was the first thing I did because I was feeling pretty stressed out by everything. The other things followed in various ways. I told myself I need to allow my eyes to glaze over and feel nothing when I read something that starts me feeling angry again. For the most part, it worked. I have stayed pretty calm over the past few days. I think my biggest mistake was engaging in discussion online with certain family members that stirred me up to raging feelings. I know better than to go there but I did. I just felt I couldn’t sit idly on the sidelines without making a comment regarding the truth in something posted. It was a mistake and hopefully I won’t go there again.
The whole thing has added to my resolve not to discuss politics or certain current events with certain members of my family. Sadly no good will come of it because we are so opposite in the ways we think about our place in the world. I will admit to feeling a bit of anger at times but I have managed to stay calm instead of losing the plot. Anyway, that has left me with a sadness because I realised I have such different values to so many people in my life. I have maintained some distance from family over the past several days but I will engage with people for Thanksgiving in some way. It’s a bit sooner than I’d have liked but I just have to rise above these feelings and make it work. After all, I at least do have the luxury of having these emotions and dealing with them in the best way I can.
I have many friends who think much more like I do and I take comfort that most of them still think the same way they did years ago when I first knew them. They don’t allow fear to rule them like some people in my family do.
Last Monday also was the birthday of my friend who died of cancer 3.5 years ago, which already made me feel a bit sad.
In addition to the emotional stuff, I also had essentially a toothache due to food continuing to get stuck under my one lower molar. It would become inflamed every time I ate and it was impossible to floss out the stuff that was stuck. I went back to the dentist last week and he replaced a filling on an adjacent tooth then did some work on a couple other things to try to solve the problem. He did an x-ray that showed it all looked quite good so was puzzled as to why it was causing me so much problems. Anyway, it seems the work he did has helped because I haven’t had any more issues since then,
For now, I will hope for some return of that lovely feeling of being really alive and happy and energetic at some point. And I will also hope for some inkling of what set that off because I would like it to happen more often.
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Grumble, grumble…
I’m feeling a bit crotchety right now so hopefully this doesn’t turn into a rambling rant.
Since my friend died in early May, there have been some issues that have caused a lot of stress and anxiety. I won’t go into that here except to say that certain things haven’t gone as they were supposed to go and it’s led to considerable frustration in some areas. It’s something that sometimes keeps me awake at night and over the past several days it has caused more anxiety than usual. A couple of things did happen today that have reduced some of the anxiety which was something of a relief.
Another friend of ours has also been mostly out of touch for several weeks following a bad case of the flu in August. Fortunately I was able to talk to her on the phone a few days ago and discovered she’s still quite ill, possibly with pneumonia. I was worried for her well-being at this point due to her absence from a couple of places where we see each other. Although she is still unwell, I no longer feel anxious on her behalf.
I was just starting to feel a lot better when I received yet another of many emails containing untruths about President Obama. All have been from the same person and I have asked in the past for them to be stopped. For years I would just ignore them. This year I had had enough so started researching and discovering the untruths and would forward this information back to the sender. I have asked that if something negative is going to be sent, make sure it is true…but this is not what is happening. I had started to ignore the emails again…Actually I would read them, then delete without response. Today I have put a stop to any further discussion regarding politics as there is no chance of either party being swayed in thinking. I hope the message gets through because these emails also cause me a lot of stress and anxiety…
I seem to be quite susceptible to the anxiety bug lately. :(
That’s the end of my grumbling. I will try to post something totally different tonight or tomorrow.
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History
Seventeen days ago, Australians voted in a federal election. Normally we have a result the same day but this time neither major party had a majority and we had a hung parliament. So we’ve been playing the waiting game to see who would be head of the government. It was all hinged upon preference choices of a few non-major party members of parliament. There’s probably an easier way to phrase that but I can’t think of anything at this hour. After more than two weeks, the last three have finally made their choices and the Labor government will remain for the next three years. We breathed a huge sigh of relief at our house once we knew the result. While we aren’t too happy with the state of this government, it’s far preferable to the opposition. And because the government doesn’t have a majority, balance of power will fall to the Greens party. So it will be interesting to see how Australian politics fares over the next three years. This whole chapter of Australian politics should be seen as quite historic. This is also the first time a woman has been elected as prime minister. And it’s also the first time a known atheist has been elected prime minister.
On a more personal note of history, today was the anniversary of the end of my second pregnancy which ended with a fetal demise thirteen years ago. It’s interesting that I’ve been more aware this year than I’ve been for the past couple of years. I no longer feel a sense of loss for the child that might have been but I do have a strong memory of the feeling of going through the experience all those years ago.
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Internet censorship plans continue
I’m trying to put myself into letter writing mode right now. Stephen Conroy is continuing his quest to censor the Internet here in Australia. His little trial was “successful” so he is tabling the proposal in parliament in April (or March, depending on which news source I read). I still believe it’s unlikely his proposal will ever pass but this is an issue I won’t risk waiting to see what happens. What makes me most furious is that the government is trying to sneak this through and is giving the public the most limited consultation on it. If ever there was an issue that would motivate me to attend a rally, this is it.
This leaves me in quite a quandary about any upcoming federal election. The Liberal party is currently being led by a climate-change denier and the Labour government that has been quite disappointing. If only the Greens party would gain enough power…