A breadcrumb trail out of the woods

How I survived Trump 1.0 + how we’re going to survive 2.0 (a helpful/hopeful post!)

I’ve been rearranging materials in the Art Attic this weekend to breathe new life into my creative practice, which has grown stale to non-existent. That, and I’m tired of running around with my hair on fire already, so I spent some time flipping through the art journals I made during Trump 1.0 to see if there were any clues as to how I made it through. It’s weird to think of presidencies in terms of “how do I survive this?” but the last time around I likened his governance to being in a DV relationship with a sociopath. The cruelty, the disrespect, the bullying, the gaslighting, the incoherent and inconsistent policies…waking up each day not knowing what to expect other than that orange man tweeting unpredictable awful shit 24/7 was too much for me.

I disliked Elon Musk before it was cool! See the aliens skipping our planet in the top right: “Planet SpaceX looks like a shithole.” This art was a response to an article in The Atlantic discussing SpaceX’s plans and how disruptive it would be — TENTACLES OF DISRUPTION — should the plug be pulled by any one of the private companies setting up our infrastructure which…uhhhh…is now even more of a concern than it was back in 2019.

Last time I made it all the way to early 2018 before I snapped and withdrew from the world to protect my mental health. I was blissfully unaware of the news for a couple of years, until I needed to start paying attention again because of Covid. Avoiding the news completely during those years was a challenge. I knew what was going on outside my small bubble world wasn’t great, but at least I wasn’t on the yo-yo end of the news cycle string. Eventually, out of sheer force of will, I accepted that people voted for the circus and now we were going to have to take the ride no matter how I felt about it.

“Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown, ask yourself why you keep going to the circus” was my mantra. #BoycottTheCircus

When I was trying to find my way out of my abusive marriage many years ago, the counselor I was working with had me do an exercise: what is the worst thing that could happen? Me ending up dead was off the table, but everything else was fair game. What if I lost everything and ended up homeless? What if he stalked me? What if he injured me? The point of the exercise was to lean into all of the potential awful circumstances that might happen if I left or if I didn’t leave, and then list all the ways I could deal with those realities. What resources did I have? How would I cope emotionally? How would I protect my baby? Where could I go for help?

On its face this exercise sounds dark and depressing. Who would want to wallow in awfulness when they’re already in a shitty situation? It wasn’t easy to get started but once I did I realized the trick: at the end of the exercise I had a long list of resources to draw on if my very worst nightmares came true. Seeing right there on paper that I wasn’t helpless was empowering. Feeling empowered wasn’t something my counselor could ever have talked me into -- I had to do that work myself. When I left that marriage things were very, very hard but I was able to get back on my feet more quickly than expected because I’d already created the plan to do so.

I’d forgotten all about this exercise until I was flipping through my comp book art journals this weekend – I’d done it again when the constant upheaval of Trump 1.0 was starting to wear me down (and then again at the beginning of the pandemic).

I leaned heavily into journaling during Trump 1.0 – I worked in a stack of art journals, a planner, a bujo, comp books, morning pages… As I sit here I’m not sure where I found the time to create the piles of work I was looking at. My youngest kiddo was still in elementary school and parenting was intensely hands-on. I was working a stressful job in child protective services and had a long commute. I was plagued by housework. I was still doing the usual family events and going to church and doing volunteer work.

Lynda Barry said to make drawings with crayons. She knows what the heck she’s talking about. Try it yourself.

How is it possible that I made all of that art during one of the busiest periods of my life, but now when I have more time than I know what to do with I feel like I can’t find five minutes to go for a run or make a collage? What is different? Why do I have this pervasive feeling of time poverty?

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

The only answer I could come up with was that I worked in my journals compulsively in every spare moment because I needed to do it for survival. I needed a container into which I could dump all of the awfulness so that it didn’t metastasize into destructive coping patterns, broken relationships, and poor mental health. It mostly worked.

I worked in child protective services during this time and WOW did I overhear some things.

When I was driving home the other day I was thinking about how it might be nice to just retreat from the world again and ignore the news, what humanity is turning into, the whole lot of it, because I can’t do anything about these things anyway. I’d leave the house for work and grocery shopping, but otherwise just stay in my little hidey-hole, minding my own business, making art and crocheting and baking and living my best life in my own little bubble world where nothing much happens and I can predict what life will look like from one day to the next. This sounds ideal and relaxing!

It also sounds very unhealthy!

“Do you know da way? SNEEEFF SNEEEEFF” was a meme that my youngest latched onto and it’s one of our inside jokes now. I’m so glad I recorded it.

So I sat down this morning and once again imagined…what is the worst thing that could possibly happen?

· I could lose my job

· My landlord could lose his ability to pay the mortgage on the house I live in, causing me to be evicted

· I could get run over by a self-driving Cybertruck while crossing the street, which would be an extremely humiliating way to get injured

· I could end up getting arrested and sent to one of those fancy new for-profit prisons they’re setting up to house mouthy purple-haired divorced women like me who don’t know their proper place after they’re done incarcerating all of the immigrants

· The bird flu might become a human pandemic

· Our country might become a dictatorship in time for my 50^th birthday, so instead of the festive Semiquincentennial theme I’ve been planning for by collecting Bicentennial memorabilia my entire life, we’ll be compelled to attend a lameass Kim Jong Un-style penis parade and nobody will be able to come to my party #sadbirthdayhornnoises

Etc etc etc, I don’t think I need to belabor the point that there are any number of awful things that could happen. I now have a plan to deal with all of them, and also, I remembered that I have a tool that I can apply in the moment. When my brain starts worrying about omg what is going to happen now?, I can just pretend it has, figure out how I’d deal if it did, and move on with my life.

This is the beauty of keeping journals. In the moment it can feel like a waste of time, just one more thing you have to make time for in your busy day. Over time, though, especially when you’ve kept journals for years or decades, they create a breadcrumb trail for you to follow when you find yourself lost in the woods. I couldn’t have sat down and thought my way into remembering the coping skills I used during Trump 1.0. Thankfully I had all the information I needed sitting on a bookshelf in my Art Attic – my past self had written an instruction manual for my future self to follow in similar circumstances.

Cast iron pan with pork chops is oddly specific lol

I had no way of knowing back in 2018 that this country would be having these (similar, if not same) experiences today. Back then I was just journaling to get the ick feelings out so they could stop taking up space in my head. In a sense it’s serving double-duty. So! This is gentle encouragement to expand your journaling practice beyond the many examples of aesthetic journals you see on IG and TikTok. They’re lovely! But there’s so much gold to mine within your own brain when you move from imitating-to-learn into feeling confidence within your own creative voice. That’s when you start creating a resource for future you.

In going through these journals I also found the answer to the question of why I suffer with time poverty: Back then I’d logged off social media entirely, including by beloved Instagram. It was such a dramatic break that I’d taken the step of changing my password to nonsense, logging out, and destroying the paper my nonsense password had been written on. And I was working in my journals to the exclusion of all other things – I wasn’t making collages, I wasn’t making paintings, I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t crocheting, I was just working in journals.

I don’t know that I need to forsake all other creative practices to make time for art journaling, but it was such a supportive practice that it would be silly to not carve out some time for it. I am going to try to move back into ignoring all online news and reading the Sunday paper and my favorite magazines (WIRED, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Mother Jones) to stay informed. It’s easier to get rid of a habit when you replace it with something else, and it’s easier to digest the news when it’s not wrapped up in drama. There’s no rule that says you have to constantly dunk your head in the toilet to know what’s going on.

Who knows? Maybe I might learn something that will be helpful for Trump 8.0. (eeeek, please no)

Still annoyed that I didn’t buy the Sesame Street nail polish. I mean come on, what a numpty I am! Also…I did not dye my hair with any of the things I bought this trip - I was too scared to DIY! Instead I waited until mid-pandemic to find an amazing stylist who was down to chop off my waist-length hair and make it purple and all these years later I’m lucky to call her a friend - best possible outcome!

I wish I had more time to do THIS. I journaled an entire Woman’s World magazine, which lives next to every supermarket checkout counter in the world - everything we’re told to do, everything we’re told to buy, all the things we’re supposed to celebrate and cook and wear…it’s a weird instruction manual on how to be a middle-aged woman and it feels so out-of-sync with reality that I’m not sure how it still exists. Very weird and interesting magazine!