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Rage Fatigue

Have you ever experienced this? When things in the world just seem so crappy that you don't even want to leave your house ever again? That's how I've been feeling lately.

As much as I love a job where I get to feel like I'm making a difference in the world, it's also really exhausting. Each bad policy or funding cut or snub from a nay-sayer takes a toll on what used to feel like an endless supply of passion and energy for creating long-term systemic change for the betterment of all people. My, how lofty. Now I just want to read Jezebel and work from home in my pajamas.

That's the danger, right? I feel my sense of impact drifting away, wondering if what I am doing is really doing any good when all I see are forces larger than myself no longer chipping but hammering away at the values I try to uphold in my life and work.

As outraged as I was at the goings on in North Carolina and Texas and Ohio, I couldn't muster up the energy to go stand as an act of protest. I felt defeated, deflated. I still do. I won't even go into the hate-filled gibberish plastered all over my Facebook feed after Saturday night. I don't have the energy to argue. I want peace.

And yet, isn't it my privilege that allows me to choose when to turn it off, tune it out? The guilt of that is crushing...and defeating...and deflating.

I need some light and love. And to stop feeling sorry for myself! And watch John Legend sing.


1 comment:

  1. I just read that a study showed that the root of happiness is gratitude, and some of that is made possible by tuning out negativity. Don't feel guilty for tuning it out when you need & want. You do what you can (probably a lot more than most people) and a happier you contributes more than you might realize.

    Here's an article supporting tuning out without guilt:

    http://www.oprah.com/spirit/What-to-Do-When-Youre-Burned-Out-Consequences-of-Stress

    Yay John Legend!

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