I paid a bunch of bills this morning. That’s not the rude thing about life, though it is a rude thing about life. Bills, they have to be paid.

I put a butternut squash in the oven just now, because I don’t want to subsist on fast food and eating out, but I’ve long been too brain-dead to focus on cooking. Another thing that is rude, but not THE rude thing about life.

Except, really? They both are part of the rude thing about life. The rude thing about life is that it goes on. I haven’t heard For My Broken Heart in years, possibly as much as a decade, but a tiny piece of it has lodged in my head and reminded me “the world ain’t gonna stop for my broken heart.”

Bills still have to be paid, I still have to remember to eat something that resembles a vegetable. I have to remember to put the garbage can to the curb for trash day. And somehow I have to do that while not becoming numb to the way the US seems to be being scrambled in the last week-ish.

I have been trying to figure out how to do that, and I haven’t done a great job honestly. I’ve managed to keep not being numb, but at a cost of greatly struggling to function at times. (This isn’t helped, I’ll be honest, by my depression and the fucking winter exacerbating it.)

So, I don’t know how to do that. And I’m writing this to tell you I don’t know how to do that balancing act. I will say I take great heart in reading Angela Webber’s piece, Art Under Fascism: Overcoming Hopelessness and Making Something, Because it Matters over on The Mary Sue because it reminded me I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed, but working to find the balance.

Then my friend Kelly posted a great and short piece on that very balancing act of functioning and fighting.

It reminded me of things that I have said in the past. And it pointed toward how to do things a bit better. I have to remember to push on spokes I have expertise in, I have to remember to engage in self-care (even when it blows chunks). And I have to be kind enough to myself to remember that all of this is working to make things better, and things that matter. And I have to remember that small victories are worth celebrating as well. For me, this includes not having missed a single dose of my medications in weeks.

How are you all doing these days? Remembering to pay bills, eat veggies, and occasionally dance or read a book or something? What small victories you’re trying to remember to celebrate?