No.526[Reply]
Hello, pals. I'm not doing great. I look at what's happening in Texas, and it's exactly what we all knew was going to happen. Climate change → extreme weather → grid failure → municipal collapse. The authorities, elected and otherwise, abandon the people. This is the moment we should have been preparing for, building networks of mutual aid, installing community microgrids, canning and pickling everything that you could eke out of a vacant neighborhood lot, and if we weren't preparing for it, we don't have an excuse any more. What needs to be done has never been clearer. And here I am, and it's just too much, guys. I want to stick my head in a drill press. I feel like somebody's taken a melon baller to my heart and scooped me out. There has never been better evidence that I am not suited for the times. I don't want to organize, I don't want to meet people or listen to their problems, I don't want to do any of the hard work that all the mutual aid groups in Texas are doing. I'm too lazy to go out and start a Food Not Bombs group and I'm too cowardly to throw Molotovs at ICE detention centers (pic related). Reading Inhabit was the first time in at least a decade I actually had hope, just for a second, but after watching myself sink deeper into the couch with every horror and indignity, that's long gone. I always thought that the two options were going to be revolution or collapse, but I never expected the revolution was going to happen during the collapse and I'd just…sit it out, like a fucking grub. What am I fucking doing here, guys?
No.528
>>526I dont think you have to try and scramble to do any anarcho or commie prepperism
Is there anything you do in life that gives you some kind of small joy?
No.530
>>528I dunno. I struggle a lot with depression, which I guess came out in that post, and one of the biggest manifestations of that is anhedonia. I like to handload ammunition, which is a fun hobby, but it's expensive. I like to listen to podcasts about social ecology. I like to make lists of all the flashlights and multitools I'd like to buy someday. Part of it is definitely a clash between what I want to do (very little, as a rule) and what I feel like I OUGHT to want to do–go out, organize, radicalize, etc. This leads to intense feelings of both guilt and shame for not doing enough.
No.532
>>530So go do it, you clearly won't feel better until you self-actualize on the things you want to do. There really isn't going to be much better advice, everyone is suffering from depression now, and I've tried everything to make it better. In reality a lot of depression doesn't get better until you self-actualize and the only way to do that is to force yourself to do things. There is no easy solution, and any solution peddled to you that sounds easy isn't going to work.
No.534
>>532To clarify, you're saying "just do it" to the mutual aid and community gardens and not to spending all my money on flashlights and gun lube?
No.538
>>534Anything that involves you participating socially with other people on some work. What that specifically is, is completely agnostic honestly. You say you don't participate in mutual aid and community gardens, maybe you don't actually like gardening all that much? A lot of people lie to themselves about what they enjoy.
Pick something that you actually like and try to turn that into something participatory maybe. Like you said you like reloading ammo? Maybe set up a monthly training on reloading, or random talks on tearing down and maintaining guns. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to share your skillset with other people in a way that provides them value. And then in turn when they have some shit to share with you, you participate in their shit. Just showing up to mutual aid shit is half the battle.