How to Survive Until November 9
A Tool Kit for Living With the Circus and the Monkeys
Emotions are high in America. The media is spinning itself into cotton candy. The candidates seem like they’re coming to us from planet WTF.
We’re all living in the middle of this circus, which is most definitely ours. We’re being run over by the monkeys. Also, definitely ours.
If we’re going to survive until Election Day, with all important relationships and our own minds intact, we’re going to need a strategy.
Here are three things that should help. A tool kit, if you will, for surviving the big top.
Remember you love these people.
And if you don’t love them, they aren’t worth raising your blood pressure over.
Ask yourself how much chance your mother, your crazy Uncle Bob, or that one commenter on HuffPo who always gets under your skin has of changing your mind. Understand you have that much chance of changing theirs.
On November 9, Your crazy Uncle Bob can go back to being just regular old crazy and not crazy Uncle Bob who’s voting THE WRONG WAY and how can he do that?
On November 9, you can re-friend all the people you had to banish from your wall because you just couldn’t anymore. Facebook will go back to being the place for baby animals and food pics.
On November 9, your personal circus will shrink back down to the people you love. And you’ll still love them. They’ll still love you.
And on November 9, the people you don’t love will go back to being nothing real important in your life. You won’t care so much that some rando on Twitter voted the wrong way.
It’ll be over. You’ll go back to the people who matter.
Turn down the volume.
We already know that more videos are probably going to surface.
And Wikileaks is probably going to leak some more.
If the non-stop, never-ending news cycle is messing with your well-being, it’s okay to tune it out.
If you’re worried about missing something, switch it back on when November 7 rolls around. You’ll get the gist of all the juicy bullshit that’s twitterpated people between now and then. You don’t have to listen to a blow by blow for the next three weeks.
Especially if it’s messing with your peace of mind. You know enough already. If you’re breathing in the United States, you know enough already.
And since you know enough already . . .
Vote early.
Mail that fucker in. Get it done, out of your hands. No taksey-backseys.
Over and done with.
You know who you’re going to vote for.
Just do it already. Spend the next three weeks doing literally anything other than thinking about this circus. These monkeys.
And forgive the people you love that don’t agree with you. I have a feeling you’re going to need each other, whatever happens on Election Day.
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Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She lives in Reno with her husband, three superstar kids, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes, is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation, and is the original Ninja Writer.
