Writing When You're Not Okay

PC: Associated Press

I'm at a loss for words lately. I'm out of speeches, platitudes, messages, and any sort of positive sentiment to say about hope. With the overturning of Roe v Wade, and just the loss of faith regarding the direction of where this country is going… I'm over it. Just everything. The system doesn’t work the way it was meant to and I don’t really have anything left to say.

My heart goes out to all women affected by the changes in this country. The struggles to come for those who now have fewer rights than before... That guns might soon be more accessible than contraceptives in this country, and, the harrowing fact that we’re moving backward in terms of... everything. Has been devastating as of late.

There is a sea of tumbleweeds blowing in the wind in the lands of where human rights used to be. This was a place of life that used to grow and nourish and foster... before the death knells of the times of today left it barren. What the hell is happening is beyond me now, but I’m waiting for it. The kindling spark of a fire that will roar and turn this brush into an inferno engulfing everything about the world that we know.

Because something has to change. 

I don’t think our current system is working. 

And I think a revolution is near… 

We just have yet to acknowledge it.

I was two days late coming back from vacation this past Friday. The airlines had said that it was cancellation due to storms in Pennsylvania. Using a phone to check the weather both where I was in Chicago, and over here at home in New Jersey, it was oddly clear in terms of storms. There something was quite obviously amiss.

There were strikes being reported at the airport that I was meant to return. And, if you look online now, you’ll see more reports about disgruntled employees and flights getting overbooked. There were too many tickets sold for the sake of profits, yet, not enough laborers and workers there to go around to actually get the planes moving.

It’s sort of becoming a systemic problem that has snowballed since the beginning of the Pandemic. A gap that grew from an already fracturing airline industry. That there have been fewer pilots produced over the years due to the costs of schooling versus a pilot’s take-home salary. That there have been, for an entire generation, many jobs tightly bound by a workforce of people now moving into retirement. 

A labor force whose positions new generations don’t want to replace.

We need more teachers, doctors, pilots, truck drivers, and social workers than ever before in our country's history. These shortages, not of people, but of qualification constraints due to systemic issues that have made this in-demand, yet unwelcomed workforce, marred by institutional redundancies such as insurance inefficiencies, low pay, and too high of an educational cost... 

This is our problem.

How do we afford college? How do we afford housing? How do we afford food? How do we stay alive right now knowing fair well, that most at the here and now, judging by the numbers game alone: are struggling. The checks and balances of this system are not working. 

Whether this is due to lobbyists, government red tape redundancies, or good old: American corporate greed. Functionality is not happening now. None of this is sustainable. And my generation, for the most part, is starting to burn through what used to be savings, all in the pursuit of living in the now because...

Well, tomorrow isn't looking so hot.

Climate change is probably the world’s biggest problem. Yet it’s so far in the back of our minds, thanks to actions of the US Supreme Court who, in merely a week, set us back decades regarding abortion, gun control laws, and the separation of church and state. The red-eye of Sauron that is this red court-- appointed by the orange idiot--basically brings everything to question the efficiencies of our institutions: how it is changing and why does this matter...

I personally want to write about why these moments that are playing out in the here and now, matter. Or better yet, do an entire feature on the history of American gun violence after the shootings in Uvalde. I want to talk about how a gun-friendly southern US has always been closely tied with gun relations and its connections to the military-industrial complex. I want to be honest about how things have gotten to where it is in terms of culture, and why we’ve allowed these systems to get away with it… mostly, out of comfortable convenience.

But the truth is none of what I say matters.

This is, I think, the sentiment so many of us are frustrated with. 

That the everyday person is no longer being heard.

So, I’ve studied a lot about data and search algorithms lately. For work. And mostly for my future in terms of career skills. Right now, we’re entering a strange time of censorship... 

I can write about these issues but none of it matters because I'm not a voice for these problems. I'm not a woman. I'm not a parent. I don't have children. And I'm not a politician. I'm not even in any debt of any kind... I’m just someone who is upset, much like, I'm assuming, yourself and most Americans.

Still, despite me being a journalist, no one really finds me when I speak up. 

My function in that profession is that of an echo chamber mostly to satisfy another group’s ends and obligations. Promote this thing. Distract these people. Talk about video games, representation, and entertainment. If I’m lucky, I get to talk about my novels and comics ideass and screenplays that I hope to get out and read by a wider audience.

But that's sort of the informational hellscape we've created: you are what the program labels you to be. There is something severely depressing about having a voice but not having one at the same time. 

To be told you have rights… yet don't. The voice of the minority.

It's hard to say or write anything when you see the world itself is ending. That's how it feels right now and nobody wants to hear it. Change is hard because people don’t want to live outside of their comfort zones. But we need it, now, more than ever.

We want normal but... look around you... this is the farthest thing from.  

I am saying all this aloud because these are the stories I genuinely want to tell. I want to try and write about the uncomfortable now. It's my form of therapy. My way of turning back the lens of cruelty over the world. Not to glorify these things, mind you, but to serve as a warning... because that’s the only thing that's making sense to me lately.

I genuinely want to write, more now than ever before, stories about the bad things happening now whether it be through the outright facts or metaphorical fiction, because...

Well, because I'm not okay. 

And I want to pretend a horribly deranged and twisted and awfully dark and messed-up world that we live in: can get better. That we can be better. 

Because I’m losing faith that this world actually will.

And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.

So I'm going to write.