You good?

You still kickin' there in your domicile?

No one knew what it would be like when this started. So you're doing what you can. You're feeding your people and finding something to do. You need help? Get it -- reach out to friends who would like nothing more than an excuse to help out someone and feel good. Or even to acquaintances or Facebook friends. You need to get out? Go sit in your car, drive around the block. Take the kids sight seeing (disinfect the gas nozzle!).

Bored? Find a way to help others in any way you can.

It's going to be OK, and if it ain't, you'll deal with it. You've dealt with tough stuff before, and if not, this is your chance to join the rest of us who have. Life changing events happen all the time (marriage, divorce, accidents and sickness). Just not usually to all of us at the same time. And we get through it. Or not. Just do what you can today, learn from yesterday, and carry on.  It's not a problem. It's just life. Live it the best you can. 

Part of the New Normal when this thing is finished:

Conventional Wisdom says to have enough in savings to survive with no income for 6 months. Looks like we're going to actually take that advice seriously from now on. It's a good policy anyway, but this shows us that it's real.  For any given person, we wouldn't be surprised if something put us out of commission for a few months (back injury, car accident, cancer, etc.), but when something inflicts that imposition on the entire globe, wow. It shows us how important that policy really is.

Not just the money, but the plan -- how do I go about creating a "dormancy plan?" And do the rent collectors have an obligation to put something like that into their agreements from now on: In the case of a global pandemic, city-inundating hurricane or earthquake: Should the business need to be dormant more than one month due to a natural disaster affecting the entire (city/state/country), rent collection will be reduced to 10% after the first month up to 6 months. And of course, living within our means takes on more nuance. In a limited natural disaster, FEMA and the kindness of others can go a long way toward helping the victims get through it. But with everyone in a similar boat, well, we need to think hard about the processes and infrastructure to sustain us while we're debilitated. Schools systems, banks, homeowners, renters, all businesses, hospitals and clinics, utilities, everything! Let's learn our damn lesson on this one.

The Deep State

What the deep state means to Donald Trump and his cohort is the public servants who live by their oath (to support and defend the constitution) instead of being loyal to the person, Trump.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Loyalty to a person is one of the lowest principles. You can be supportive or a friend or a confidant, whatever, without supporting their vices.  Being loyal to someone doing the wrong thing takes you right down the wrong with them. Loyal in support of unethical behavior makes you an unethical sycophant. Are you afraid of losing power? Are you an approval seeker from the top dog? Fuck. That. Shit. You're nothing. Especially when you've seen that the loyalty is always one way. He will turn tail and abandon the loyal minions, scapegoat them, besmirch them, mock and belittle them the minute it's not politically popular. The minute they have a (almost always smarter) opinion than Trump.

Trump and the Christians

When someone doesn't espouse your values, you can forgive him and you can love him as Jesus instructed, but I'm pretty sure Jesus never said you should make him your leader and you should idolize him and give him vast amounts of power and let him be the spokesperson for your whole country. Or did he?

He's like a one man crusade to crucify the 10 commandments. It's like the "thou shalt not's" are his bucket-list. It's like he takes the words of Jesus and does the opposite: Love your enemy? I'll hate my friends!  Turn the other cheek? Hell no, redouble their slight! If a person asks for your shirt, give him your jacket as well. God forbid - exploit the poor, especially from countries of brown skinned people! Give to Caesar what is Ceasar's? You're not seeing my taxes because I've done everything I can to cheat.  Of course you can all go on and on.

The President is and should be the leader and role model for his people, and Trump is among the worst leaders and an absolutely terrible model to follow.

How kindness relates to saving the earth.

Saving the earth.

OK, let's agree the earth is heating up and it's making all sorts of changes throughout the world. Even now, some Pacific islanders are looking for a new place to call home. Refugees suffer, and the more refugees, the rate of suffering increases exponentially as countries' ability to manage the situation is strained to their limits. Conditions around the world right now with immigration are obviously strained (the US just halved it's annual cap of refugees). The faster the climate changes, the faster people will have to adjust to the new conditions, and again, the more people who have to remake their lives in less time, the more pain. Have you ever been forced out of your house because of flooding or fire? Yeah. Major suffering.

As a participant in the modern carbon-intensive lifestyle, every contribution I make to the tonnage of carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere adds the future suffering of humanity. Kindness demands an effort to reduce my contribution to the future suffering of humanity. Even if I can prevent just a few families from having to endure the excruciating undertaking of uprooting and finding somewhere else in the world that might take me in, my efforts will provide some succor.  Once I know this, inaction is turning my back on the welfare of my fellow human. 

If You're Depressed and Want To Be Better...

If you're honestly interested in mental health and you're suffering, you owe it to yourself to get settled first:

1. Eliminate processed food, extra sugar, excess nicotine/ caffiene, alcohol. Eat more real food: fruit and cream for your sweet tooth, your favorite veggies, cutting down on meat but enjoying your food. You can indulge on occasion, but you know that healthy diets can have a great effect on brain chemistry.

2. Exercise regularly and rigorously. Start by walking, dancing, a little tennis. Mix it up. Yoga, Zumba, whatever. Social activities are even better, but sometimes just out on your own, and being in nature is a proven mood lifter for many.  Some regular exercise is better than none, but if you can bring yourself to greater than a half hour 4 or more times per week, the effects really start to make a difference.

3. Regular and healthy sleep. Eliminate electronics in the bedroom, keep a regular routine, make your bedroom a healthy sanctuary reserved for sleep. Reading, TV and internet in the other room.

4. Gardening, tending plants, being out there working with your hands. If that doesn't work with your housing situation, a neighborhood garden or even terrariums or a fish tank can provide one more thing to center your soul for just a minute.

5. Other handwork done deliberately and with a meditative spirit also has positive effects. Making music, listening to positive music (not necessarily high tempo or motivating, but any music that just makes you feel good is fine).

6. Socializing with people and keeping the conversation on topics of interest, ask about THEM, let them talk about themselves, care about them and listen like a friend. Share positive events. Talk about things you're doing to improve your mood. Do things that get you out of your normal zone, geographically and mentally. Go somewhere, see something, experience different things (movies, museums, concerts, parks, etc.)

6. a. Volunteering in a forum that allows you to directly help others. Being part of making the world a better place is often very affirming and brings deep, personal satisfaction. The collateral benefit is you're being a ray of light for someone so who cares how you feel anyway. The world and even your life is bigger than you. Get over it.

7. Meditation itself can be a powerful mental exercise for several reasons. First, it calms your mind during the act. Second, it increases your ability to bring your mind to a calm state when you get stressed, anxious, stressed.

7. b. Spiritual enrichment, whether in community or personal study or prayer, can connect you to ideas bigger than you and provide a bedrock of comfort that other things sometimes can't.

8. Professional therapy: The above may be enough collectively to turn things around. All of them take sustained practice and someone in a sever depressive state may be unable to motivate themselves enough to start or sustain any of them at all. But with the help of a professional depression therapist, your odds are much better as they learn the dynamics of your individual complexes contributing to your condition.  

9.  If you've done all the above, medication or other medical processes/ procedures (like electro/magnetic brain stimulation) may very well be your best course of action. There are some very promising treatments like low dose MDMA or LSD that my provide a much better prognosis and fewer side effects than the current norms of SSRIs.

Of course if that sounds like too much, do a few of them. You never know which one will help you past a tipping point. And of course, if you're already married to your identity as a depressed person, than you'll find an excuse to sabotage or avoid any real effort anyway. I hope you can last long enough to get over that particular hump.

Economic Election Predictions

I'm going to go out on a limb and make some predictions about the next election. Trump will do his best to manipulate his treatment of China, Mexico & Canada, and Europe and Japan (all out big trading partners) to provide economic relief leading up to the 2020 election. He will keep things suppressed using various tariffs, agreements, etc. as he's doing now. And then in measured intervals as the presidential election begins his crescendo, he will suddenly disclose some detail that makes him remove some tariffs here and there, to finalize an agreement, a precision tweet about how the Fed is coming around and praise their latest public statements or action, tweak the latest adjustments to taxes (based on the economic demography of some targeted electoral district)... I'm sure you can imagine 10 clever machinations he could implement in time for the next election. And the markets will respond as you'd expect. And his supporters will extol his genius. But just like North Korea -- when you create a false crisis and then "fix it" -- you can't legitimately take credit for being awesome. But legitimate is not something Trump has ever really been concerned with. I mean, really. Who's to say what legitimate even means? Right?