Tools to Assist Your Spiral into Despair

Despite my busy-busy-ness (it's getting better! I'm almost there!  next week will be better!), I am unable to rip my gaze from the horror of Katrina and its aftermath and the utter travesty of the government response.  I know I'm one of the people who have been saying how horrible, incompentent, or possibly evil the Bush administration is for all this time.  The really bad part is that this situation has proved those things to be far more gravely true than even I was willing to believe until now.  Even now I hope and pray that some of these facts (sadly well-documented now) turn out to be untrue.

But I just wanted to tell you that if your mental health is already down the tubes with this whole thing anyway, and you have no hope of turning your eyes from the horror and muttering new-age affirmations to yourself about how the universe is in balance or some such, it turns out that Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are once again providing absolutely seminal coverage of this tragedy.  Teresa's words from after the election still echo in my mind; once again they've gotten it exactly right.

Most particularly, check out here:

What we did on our vacation

Welcome to the insurgency (here's your accordion)

Not an imaginary story

They even have advice for dealing with news overload.  Not that they're taking their own advice.  Or making it easy for the rest of us.  But I thank them anyway.

In addition, there's the somewhat surprisingly excellent coverage of Brian Williams of NBC, whose blog is here, and of course the Times-Picayune, the absolute source.  And this interesting source from inside, including a web cam and daily photos.

Back to my report.  Can I just say how much I love clients with whom I have exchanges like this:

Me: I'll get it to you September 9th.

(two weeks pass)

Them: I was wondering what the ETA on the report would be; we want to plan a presentation date after the committee has had time to read it.

Me: It will be in your inbox first thing Monday morning (September 12th).

Them: Oh, that's wonderful!  Thank you so much!  We're so excited!

Thank you to the goddess of research deadlines for finding me a client who realizes that the difference between Friday night and Monday morning means nothing to them and everything to me. 

Yip-yah-hoo.

Comments

[JoVE]

Hurray for you on the deadline thing. Now write some crap that can be turned into something lovely before monday! And treat the news like weighing yourself on a diet. Don't look at it more than once a week. Honestly. Not enough changes in shorter time periods and you just end up engaging in obsessive behaviour. Not to mention loosing sleep you can ill afford to lose.

[The Feminist Mafia]

Spiraling.

[Teresa Nielsen Hayden]

Thanks for remembering. I get downhearted too.

[Thorn/Barb]

Dear gods.

I followed your link to Making Light, and then followed other links for about half an hour.

That's about all I can take. The helpless hopeless anger gets to be too much for me, and by then I'm just sobbing, aghast at how inhumane human beings can be to each other.

I have no words to express how frustrated and angry I am, how shameful I find the entire situation to be.

I just cry and scour my house for more things I can send out to help.

[Jenny in NC]

Like they'd read it over the weekend anyway... I get the spiraling into despair thing, and I've been in a mild funk for a few days. I realized that natural and federal disastrophes (my daughter's term) not withstanding, I've been also getting everyone into the school year and trying to jump back into work with both feet and then some. And not knitting enough. I picked up the needles for the first time in about 3 days tonight, and that, a good book, and some excellent ice cream are making some great therapy. Take care of yourself!

[PainterWoman]

1. The mittens (both gauges/styles) look beautiful.
2. Glad to see that preschoolers have special friends.
3. Hope you feel better.
4. Just be glad you live "up east" where you have people that agree with you, rather than in Texas where apparently W et al are still immune from criticism.
5. There seems to be enough ineptitude to go around at every bureaucratic level.