Many have asked me what I’m doing for Election Day. And I have no real answer for them.
There are plenty of options between the two extremes of either watching every minute of television coverage, spiced with occasional doomscrolling, or avoiding coverage altogether in favor of reading, video games, hot baths, or other self-care. The only part most parties seem to agree on is that there will be massive drinking late Tuesday/early Wednesday, either in celebration or despair.
I…honestly have no idea. I diligently wrote and mailed off ~65 letters for the VoteForward effort and I’ve kept up with news as best as I can stand. As an anxious person, I’m accustomed to trying to imagine every eventuality in a (futile) attempt to predict the future but this year (hell, the past 4 years but especially 2020) has been so (cliché alert!) unprecedented that I find myself ironically trying like hell to stay in the moment.
Because it feels like tomorrow night (even though we all logically know the results won’t be known for days) will herald either the end of the world or a new beginning.
I’ll decide tomorrow how and how much I’m going to follow what looks to be a very slow-moving trainwreck when I read the AM news. And likely reconsider my decision every time I look at the news tomorrow, no matter how frequent or seldom.
I may not be on social media though. If I’m smart, I won’t be.
I feel your pain. I can’t remember an election in my lifetime that is so fraught with emotion. The problem with being a historian is that we’re great at connecting patterns from the past, but the present is a different story. We’re all too close to the situation.
I’m going to attempt to stay off social media as well …
I may well be a fool for saying this, but be of good cheer! I just gave my reasons for saying so:
https://theamsterdamned.com/2020/11/02/election-eve-lets-be-reasonable/