Only a little more than a month has passed since I last posted, but it feels like it forever. I guess it feels that way because we find ourselves in an existential crisis of what our country means thanks to electing a cult of personality into the White House.
It's not 100% bad, though. The Blue and Progressive waves feel heartening. If they prove successful, hopefully we can keep them going, continue the activism and momentum for local and State Democratic campaigns and action (though I'm disappointed that my State House and Senate Democratic elections didn't have any contenders for the incumbents. I want people in those offices to fight good against gerrymandering and dividing up Illinois districts in the way that best represents the people of those districts).
Today, I voted and man, there were a lot of candidates! After watching Thor Ragnorak with Michi, I started in on researching the candidates. Stopped researching at about 12:30 this morning then got up at about 11 AM this morning. Start researching again around 12:30 afternoon and ended up about 4:35ish. That gave me about 20 minutes to walk a couple blocks to the library for the early voting. I worried about not making it in time, but I did, and I overheard one of the Election Officials say that they weren't closing until everyone who showed up gets to vote. That reassures me.
Part of me wants to post who I voted for and another part of me doesn't want to. Part of me wants to throw up some of these candidates in support or at least to say that they're better than the other ones. But another part of me doesn't want to add to a "poll fire" of giving other voters the sense of security that the candidate they want to vote for has support and has a good chance of winning, so they're vote isn't needed. I know that I'm just one voter, not a "scientific" poll, but I don't want to contribute to that kind of security people might adopt. Frankly, part of me beliees this might have happened in past elections.
Yes, I want the public to feel insecure about the election, insecure enough to get out there and vote. About 50% of our electorate didn't vote in the 2016 Election. If everyone in that 50% made their one vote, it could have made a huge difference and might have prevented the national mess that we find ourselves in.
I will acknowledge that some of that 50% might be counted as voted because of voter suppression, and that's an example of injustice. But the people who likely wouldn't have been suppressed, if you didn't vote, I believe you should have and regret that you didn't. Even if you think the options aren't great or even that you don't think that any candidates will affect your experience of this American life, our current Federal government proves that the options can be worse than you think, that your experience can get worse, AND seriously, there are other people who will be affected if we let someone like [45] get into our offices again. More than likely, we will have a less worse option or even an option that is OK instead of THE WORST.
So everyone in the United States: Get out there in and vote in your state's primaries and get ready to vote in the General Elections in November. We are crafting the character and fabric of our neighborhoods, our villages, towns, and cities, our counties, our states, our country, and our world. This is the least that we can do for the sake of justice, sanity, peace, civilization, and prosperity.
As for the rest of life and future expectations of the blog, things still remain hectic. Work has remained crazy, which should calm down once we reach the summer. Taxes has been another hang up on me "filing" entries but frankly, I haven't addressed them as studiously as I would like. After reviewing some facts about taxes, though, I've realized that I don't have to be as studious. I don't believe my family's charitable donations and stuff like that will even reach our standard deduction, so there's no point in gathering all those records together. I will continue making donations and such, but the two of us can't realistically afford to make enough deductible contributions to compete with the standard deduction (especially considering the increased standard deduction starting this year).
But I'll let y'all in on something of a NOT SECRET that I need to promote more often: the more "coffee" you buy me, the more chance I have of reaching a point to "filing" more blog entries and even getting to work more on my creative endeavors and possibly more activism. I doubt those coffee purchases will get me my "creative time license" tomorrow, next month, or even next year or two, but a person can dream!
All that being said, have some Twittervism! I didn't even plan to write so much in this supposed intro!
If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!
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