7 Ways to Pass the Time on Election Day and Afterwards
Other than just eating and dying inside and working like little gerbils on a wheel
Dear Emily,
Two Questions: How do I survive Election Day? And 2. How do I survive AFTER election day if the current president is reelected?
Signed,
Just curious
Dear Just Curious,
If this bad, stupid, mean, selfish, venal, ridiculous, dishonest, childish, surprisingly powerful man is reelected, the best of us will be shot through with an immediate calling, a clear mission to not let this government or its mistaken supporters off the hook for one more second.
Full-court Press, Baby
It will be time for a full-court press, to return to yesterday’s basketball analogy.
Down with the Electoral College. No more comfortable Senate and House of Representative and governor jobs. No, we’ll make those jobs very, very difficult.
The other side had the Tea Party? We are the Coffee Party, motherfuckers, (which I see has already been established as an antidote to the Tea Party, by a couple of filmmakers, and that it has a quaint page on Wikipedia, but now it’s time for it to come alive in full force).
There’s no tea version of Starbucks for a reason: tea is lame. Tea doesn’t understand the true meaning of caffeine and productivity.
We will institute an immediate national moratorium on clicking on any news that sounds like, “Trump Called Someone Fat,” or “Mother Sells Five-year-old Daughter as Sex Slave,” or “Kim Kardashian Trimmed Bangs.”
Because we will no longer fuel the trash-and-timesucks-and-gossip industry. We will reward only real journalism about things that might matter to our real lives. We will wage massive boycotts, strikes, and sit-ins.
Of course, full-court presses are tiring and time consuming. But it’s how Trump has gained so much power and attention. His whole MO is the full court press, and the other side has been all, “Wait, what? That’s now how we play!”
But I think we will win today.
And when we do, we should probably STILL start using the full-court press to fix what’s broken: expand the Supreme Court, do away with the Electoral College, diminish the power of the presidency, fix the police, prosecute Trump for crimes, save the environment, kill the health insurance industry.
7 Ways to Pass the Time Until the Count is Final
Pray to God. Ask for divine intervention and strength to survive and do good work no matter what the outcome of the election.
Clean out/organize your basement. It is SO satisfying. Pick one tiny corner and ATTACK.
Do your day job in 20-minute bursts of turbo-productivity, alternating those with mini-breaks to watch stand-up comedy or Tiny Desk concerts on YouTube.
Online shopping! Set a spending limit—say $70—and purchase as many delightful Hanukkah or stocking stuffer things as possible made by real people, on Etsy, or in your neighborhood.
Bake a braided stress loaf. This is a loaf of bread, well kneaded yeast dough, that transforms your stress and worry into soothing nourishment for yourself and others. Go for a 5-strand braid or greater.
Go for a run if you can.
Join some friends outside, next to a fire in a trashcan, with mulled wine or hot cider or a cold beer in hand, and talk about America and how much you love it, the idea, the good parts, the promise. The sand dunes and the forests and the rap music and new soul and show tunes and gospel and Thanksgiving dinners and how tolerant we all are of ugly strips of retail and drive-thrus and how intolerant of bribery by low officials—we just won’t stand for that, any of us. And how trustful we tend to be, how nice our teeth are and how most of us moisturize our skin and how we will pitch in for bake sales and to try public speaking if it seems like that will help, and we will try out sports, pick a team, paint our faces, get into the spirit, or allow others to do that without putting them down. We like our lunches and swimming in pools and demand interesting bathing suits every few years and interesting shoes. We like dressing up babies, putting plants in pots and fussing over them, moving them around, trying new fried foods. We tend to remember to mention as many religions as we know of, in lists. We are hopeful, and we love to spend time with criminals in TV shows, and kooks and good lawyers and silly young roommates in cities. We put up with long standup comedy routines that are less about being funny and more about one guy just talking to us. We laugh out of habit. We sing and expect that the spirit will move us, lift us up. We invite the magic and strength of the universe to be with us in humble places, knowing it shows up. We all own the whole country and will go anywhere, even to a state thousands of miles away and we won’t ask permission or feel too much like an outsider. This is still America, isn’t it? We want to be good. Maybe good means being able to imagine what it’s like to be different, to have less, to have more, or maybe being good means being very self-reliant and tough, but we want to be good. We don’t want our place in life, or anyone else’s, to be preordained. We want to keep open the possibility of greatness for ourselves. We want to be reverent in the face of anything that deserves reverence. We are on the lookout. We all have, in our heads, the picture of some one perfect gathering of our family, a moment when all the key people are still alive and the table is set with the food we are used to, the recipes that have persisted and come down through time—spoonbread or weird jello salads or big tubs of baked casserole or tastes from another continent—and in that moment, everyone is speaking at once and yet we are all listening and silent too, hearing the sound—the song—of our family, a family that is not like anyone else’s and never will be. No one knows us but us. But also, we’re not necessarily better or worse than any other strange family either. It’s not a contest. And in that one silent moment when we are all somehow speaking over each other at once and not saying a word, the feast before us waiting and magnificent, we love ourselves and our chances.
God I love you