It's a long way down
If there's no parachute
I hadn’t heard of Substack until a few months ago when Nick Offerman posted that he was starting one, and that he would regularly be sharing content. I don’t know how to get my media fix anymore, because social media makes me feel hopeless, news sites are depressing, and talking to people without some type of background information makes for a pretty boring conversation.
I’m trying to find a balance between being informed and overwhelmed. There’s an infinite supply of information, and a finite amount of time in which to absorb it.
I’ve spent most of the last few years observing. Taking in. Listening, reading, chewing, swallowing, digesting. As an “elder millennial”, The Internet and I grew up together. Our coming-of-age stories are intertwined - we made it, it made us.
I ended up untangling myself from regular posts and pictures about my life and family at some point a few years ago, and found the change quite freeing. I was no longer looking at each moment figuring out which part I could capture, post, and (hopefully) get a positive response from my audience. I enjoyed the back and forth at first, but later it started to feel like a highlight reel, and was missing anything really substantive.
And then it became political - which was eye-opening.
As it began to feel like the world as I knew it was crumbling, I realized it was more that the blurry lens through which I was viewing it was getting cleared off. Or removed. I noticed that I was on an unhealthy media diet, and it was time for a change. I got off the facebook and took to eating rather than posting on Reddit or IG.
I had a very limited scope - in my privileged suburban life. I still do, but I’m working on that.
I feel the urge to apologize for my ignorance too often. I want to know everything, but I also want to unlearn, relearn, and establish new ways of being that seem to be better for the common good.
How existential.
I’ve spent much time writing throughout my life - journals, papers for school, poems, doodles. Mostly for me, till social media, and then later for me again. Pages of ramblings, opinions, thoughts, fears, dreams, bundles. It hasn’t been clear what I’m unpacking when I write (or if I’m packing up thoughts for storage or destruction). Regardless, it feels better to put it down, so I keep doing it.
Here, though, I’m putting it down in case someone else wants to pick it up.
I’ve spent most of the last two years noodling on Healthcare (capital H) and the steep spiral we seem to be going down. I’m a worrier by nature, so to have something real to actually be worrying about is, well, a change in my modern life. I’m not used to seeing things so… simultaneously uncomplicated and disastrous at the same time.
Why is it disastrous, you say?
Because American Healthcare is a gigantic fucking mess, everywhere you go, and we’re all trying to take care of human lives in this dumpster fire situation.
Why is it uncomplicated?
Because at the root of all we’re doing, is a human life that will eventually end in death. Period.
And somewhere in the middle - we have people suffering unnecessarily.
Who’s suffering?
I’ll venture to say - “everyone”. In some way, some mildly - some severely. Some in the world are literally at war in real-life, others are at war in their families or minds.
We seem to feel we’re suffering in isolation - unique in our challenges.
Those seeking care, and those providing it. All, eventually, heading for the same (finite?) end.
What brought me here is this feeling that, I’m not alone in this. I can’t be the only one who’s got this view of… healthcare and its participants.
I don’t know if I’m here to commiserate, or to get my bearings, or to get a sense of where we’re heading —- and how to do a course correction sooner than later.
My suggestions to make it better are not feasible in the current American lifestyle.
My suggestions involve people in the community taking care of each other. Each other.
The trees in the forest that haven’t fallen are the ones that make the sound…
…It’s a long way from over if we all turn around.
Which would first involve knowing each other.
Which is hard to do when we’re all so “busy”, staying connected virtually, forgetting to keep our feet planted on the ground. Disregarding the real life happening all around us.
And when I start to notice that disconnected feeling - I get my hands in the dirt, I make time to be with people, and I let myself dream about how it could be if…
My hope is that we can turn around, together.