When is it enough?
For obvious reasons, I've been feeling a need to be a lot more active in the community and a lot less complacent this year. I've gotten myself onto a bunch of lists. And now I'm trying to sort out what I can actually handle. I'm not going to say that the world was great before last fall--but I guess I was privileged enough to think that if I voted right and gave some annual donations, that progress was generally being made. Well, we know how that went. And how things are going. And now that I'm increasingly tapped into some overlapping activist circles, it's just this overwhelming black hole of need. No matter how much I do, it will never actually finish anything. So how do you decide what's "enough"?
I've done a bunch of stuff in the last couple months. Multiple organizational meetings. Marching for immigrant rights. I started volunteering at the local food pantry. Wrote welcome cards for new Syrian refugees placed in our area. Started actually paying for a newspaper subscription. Joined a composting collective. Picked a several days' long fight by email with city hall over the definition of a sanctuary city. I do my weekly round of contacting my congress-critters. (I've been liking Wall-of-Us, who sends out an email of four suggested actions each Sunday evening. I don't always do all of them, but there are usually at least a couple that I can do.) I've written letters to my sheriff and the school board, to companies and the women's PGA. I've started a project of finding a new charity each month. (Yes, I realize that from a budgeting perspective, smaller recurring donations can be more helpful than a big one. But I've never liked recurring payments--they're too easy to get screwed up and too hard to stop. And exploring other organizations' missions is turning out to be educational.) Like a lot of people, we sent checks to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU in November. I'm trying to branch out. NAACP in January. Church World Services, who are the official refugee resettlement agency for our area, in February. EarthJustice, who I'd never heard of before but turns out to be pretty awesome, in March. Plus some money tossed to Jon Ossoff's campaign in Georgia.
It still doesn't feel like enough.
The plus side of being on a lot of lists is that there are a ton of suggested activities, so I can pretty much just pick stuff according to my schedule. The downside is, there's basically something every day. (Tonight is a Hudson CAN! meeting. Tomorrow is a "Protect Our Healthcare!" teach-in at City Hall. Thursday is screening of "Don't Tell Anyone" by the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, and a happy hour dedicated to coordinating efforts with our district's House Rep, and a webinar on "The Educational Rights of Immigrant Children", the weekly Jersey City Vigil for Refugees, and an immigration research party.) My plan for tonight is writing, and maybe playing Lego Star Wars. Tomorrow I'll have dinner with friends and bake something. Thursday I was going to play D&D. Is any of my plans actually more important than trying to keep undocumented immigrants from being torn from their families or people dying from inadequate healthcare or the planet warming beyond the point that humans can survive? No. Most of what I spend my time on is actually trivial and stupid. Do I really need a new shirt or frou-frou tapas for lunch or some fancy cheese? No. Much of what I spend my discretionary income on is actually trivial and stupid, too.
But at the same time, I don't actually want to let Trump and Congress ruin my life. And maybe that's selfish, because I do have so much more than so many people. But I've never really aspired to be a martyr, and I can't fairly ask Chuckro or ARR to be martyred along with me, and I'm definitely worried about burning out and giving up everything in despair. I'm also worried about what history will think of me. (Not me personally, since I don't actually think I'm particularly important or memorable, but of what class of people I will be in.)
So I'm constantly struggling with what is enough. (And I know there's no actual good answer here.) At what point have I done enough to be able to consider myself a good person for the day? The childish part of me wants a Hyperbole-and-a-Half style award that says "yes, you have done enough today, good job, go play video games guilt free for a little bit." Real world doesn't work like that, unfortunately.
I'm not actually looking for an answer, it doesn't exist. But how are other people wrestling with this?
I've done a bunch of stuff in the last couple months. Multiple organizational meetings. Marching for immigrant rights. I started volunteering at the local food pantry. Wrote welcome cards for new Syrian refugees placed in our area. Started actually paying for a newspaper subscription. Joined a composting collective. Picked a several days' long fight by email with city hall over the definition of a sanctuary city. I do my weekly round of contacting my congress-critters. (I've been liking Wall-of-Us, who sends out an email of four suggested actions each Sunday evening. I don't always do all of them, but there are usually at least a couple that I can do.) I've written letters to my sheriff and the school board, to companies and the women's PGA. I've started a project of finding a new charity each month. (Yes, I realize that from a budgeting perspective, smaller recurring donations can be more helpful than a big one. But I've never liked recurring payments--they're too easy to get screwed up and too hard to stop. And exploring other organizations' missions is turning out to be educational.) Like a lot of people, we sent checks to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU in November. I'm trying to branch out. NAACP in January. Church World Services, who are the official refugee resettlement agency for our area, in February. EarthJustice, who I'd never heard of before but turns out to be pretty awesome, in March. Plus some money tossed to Jon Ossoff's campaign in Georgia.
It still doesn't feel like enough.
The plus side of being on a lot of lists is that there are a ton of suggested activities, so I can pretty much just pick stuff according to my schedule. The downside is, there's basically something every day. (Tonight is a Hudson CAN! meeting. Tomorrow is a "Protect Our Healthcare!" teach-in at City Hall. Thursday is screening of "Don't Tell Anyone" by the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, and a happy hour dedicated to coordinating efforts with our district's House Rep, and a webinar on "The Educational Rights of Immigrant Children", the weekly Jersey City Vigil for Refugees, and an immigration research party.) My plan for tonight is writing, and maybe playing Lego Star Wars. Tomorrow I'll have dinner with friends and bake something. Thursday I was going to play D&D. Is any of my plans actually more important than trying to keep undocumented immigrants from being torn from their families or people dying from inadequate healthcare or the planet warming beyond the point that humans can survive? No. Most of what I spend my time on is actually trivial and stupid. Do I really need a new shirt or frou-frou tapas for lunch or some fancy cheese? No. Much of what I spend my discretionary income on is actually trivial and stupid, too.
But at the same time, I don't actually want to let Trump and Congress ruin my life. And maybe that's selfish, because I do have so much more than so many people. But I've never really aspired to be a martyr, and I can't fairly ask Chuckro or ARR to be martyred along with me, and I'm definitely worried about burning out and giving up everything in despair. I'm also worried about what history will think of me. (Not me personally, since I don't actually think I'm particularly important or memorable, but of what class of people I will be in.)
So I'm constantly struggling with what is enough. (And I know there's no actual good answer here.) At what point have I done enough to be able to consider myself a good person for the day? The childish part of me wants a Hyperbole-and-a-Half style award that says "yes, you have done enough today, good job, go play video games guilt free for a little bit." Real world doesn't work like that, unfortunately.
I'm not actually looking for an answer, it doesn't exist. But how are other people wrestling with this?