What is this life?
I feel unmoored. Nothing has happened to make me feel this way, particularly. I think it's the cumulative effect of everything. Not only does the entire world appear to be falling (further) into chaos and tribality, and the national situation seems unsalvageable, but Oregon is flooding (better than burning? maybe...), the political left is unable to stop tearing itself apart at any level, The Good Place is over, parenting a teen is the hardest thing, and I'm looking menopause right in the eye. Also, I'm still on the downward slope of the happiness curve.
My job, building on my last job, involves talking and thinking a lot about things that have to change - we have to build more densely in our cities, and we have to get around more without cars - but that are incredibly difficult for people to imagine changing. The way humans normalize things is staggering to me, whether it's normalizing purging and dehumanizing your enemies or normalizing traveling around at speed in a mostly-empty metal box that emits air pollution (that gives us heart attacks and cancer and alzheimers and learning disabilities and HAIR LOSS), messes up the climate, and crushes to death 40,000 Americans a year. We are capable of accommodating and rationalizing so much. And pushing on it makes me feel exhausted. I'm not naturally inclined to activism; I like being a cog, and I don't like saying things that make people scrutinize me. (I love lecturing to passive, approving audiences, though - let me know if you've got one of those needing a speaker.) However, my personal theory of What We Need to Do (which is well-supported by research - I swear I am not making this up) can come across as wildly radical to normal people. Even the most liberal people mysteriously believe in a whatever-deity-granted right to free parking for eternity. And this makes me feel kind of unhinged all the time. It's totally possible that I SOUND unhinged a lot of the time. The other day I was explaining my theory of transportation systems to a person I had just met in a professional context, and he listened to me explain that a person who takes transit instead of driving to a destination, even if they go there for the most nefarious purpose, such as murder, has made a prosocial choice of transportation, and then he said "Do you say this kind of thing in public?"
So there you go. Unhinged, unmoored. However, I just want to say, please consider driving a little less. It was 65 degrees in Antarctica today. Maybe look into how you could get involved in local upzoning efforts, or maybe some advocacy around bike infrastructure. Bumblebees are going extinct. Ask city hall to dedicate right-of-way to buses instead of car storage. I'll let you off the hook about menopause, but you should definitely take the train next time.
My job, building on my last job, involves talking and thinking a lot about things that have to change - we have to build more densely in our cities, and we have to get around more without cars - but that are incredibly difficult for people to imagine changing. The way humans normalize things is staggering to me, whether it's normalizing purging and dehumanizing your enemies or normalizing traveling around at speed in a mostly-empty metal box that emits air pollution (that gives us heart attacks and cancer and alzheimers and learning disabilities and HAIR LOSS), messes up the climate, and crushes to death 40,000 Americans a year. We are capable of accommodating and rationalizing so much. And pushing on it makes me feel exhausted. I'm not naturally inclined to activism; I like being a cog, and I don't like saying things that make people scrutinize me. (I love lecturing to passive, approving audiences, though - let me know if you've got one of those needing a speaker.) However, my personal theory of What We Need to Do (which is well-supported by research - I swear I am not making this up) can come across as wildly radical to normal people. Even the most liberal people mysteriously believe in a whatever-deity-granted right to free parking for eternity. And this makes me feel kind of unhinged all the time. It's totally possible that I SOUND unhinged a lot of the time. The other day I was explaining my theory of transportation systems to a person I had just met in a professional context, and he listened to me explain that a person who takes transit instead of driving to a destination, even if they go there for the most nefarious purpose, such as murder, has made a prosocial choice of transportation, and then he said "Do you say this kind of thing in public?"
So there you go. Unhinged, unmoored. However, I just want to say, please consider driving a little less. It was 65 degrees in Antarctica today. Maybe look into how you could get involved in local upzoning efforts, or maybe some advocacy around bike infrastructure. Bumblebees are going extinct. Ask city hall to dedicate right-of-way to buses instead of car storage. I'll let you off the hook about menopause, but you should definitely take the train next time.
Comments
Menopause isn't that bad. Difficult teenagers with parents like Duchess come out very well in the end.