Say the weird thing

Hi folks!

Weird to hear from me, huh?

It's been a minute.

And here we are staring down the barrel of a general election. And I've been entirely absent in terms of opining and ranting. What's that about?

Well, a few things. Life has unfortunately been life-ing a bit hard the last few months. I'll not go into details but just understand that it's been A LOT.

It's just one of those truisms of life (or at least in mine) that it's harder to be creative and quippy when you are Dealing With All The Things. Which is not to say that my sense of humour has gone anywhere - how the fuck would I cope without it? - just that perhaps the grim, fatalist black humour I'm prone to in times of stress is not necessarily what I want to put out into the world. I don't know if you've noticed but it's pretty fucking grim out there already. Nobody needs my particular brand of stress-induced Gen X doomerism just now (or ever).

Combined with this has just been a general loss of confidence and sense of "why the fuck would anyone be interested in reading my thoughts and opinions? I'm not special. My thoughts and opinions are as garbage as anyone's".

This is undeniably true and yet entirely not the point.

If a plethora of ho-hum podcasts has taught us anything, it's that having nothing special to say and no particular expertise need not be, and is not, a barrier to sharing your thoughts with the world in general. If it's good enough for mediocre white men then it should be good enough for caramel-coloured Polynesian women¹, right?

And then I saw this BlueSky post and reposted it with my own reflection that this was a good thing that this person did.

And then I had another one of those "oh, shit. I guess I have to do the thing," moments where once I've identified a thing that I think is good my very next thought is, "well, shouldn't you do that then?" and it's very annoying but at least the angel on my shoulder is doing her job keeping this bitch honest, you know?

So in the face of an uncertain election outcome, family dramas, perimenopause, a child with a broken toe and any other number of competing and completely draining factors, here are my hopes for the future².

• A wealth tax. Nick Mowbray packs a sad about it and packs his bags and nobody misses him (not even his parents)
• FREE DENTAL
• We start providing actual real support to disabled folks so they can actually live rather than just survive.
• PAY EQUITY
• We scrap all the puritanical "you can't have a partner and also claim a benefit" bullshit.
• Government gets the fuck out of trans healthcare and it becomes a thing that only the people affected and their doctors need to have an opinion on.
• Chloe Swarbrick gets to be Finance Minister (causing a lot of crusty old farts to shart themselves)
• We really go hard on solar with subsidies and such (including the plug in kind you get in Europe (and the UK now)³ and can use as a renter).
• Reinstate the old "Artists' dole" we used to have so we get so much insanely good (but also probably quite bad) art and literature and music and film that we're just in a constant state of rapture about it (and also the hospitality industry gets a massive boost).
• ALL THE RAIL. I WANT US TO GET RAILED, GOOD AND PROPER.
• Raise the Public Lending Right payments to a reasonable level and fix whatever the heck went wrong last time that meant people didn't get paid the meager pittance they were entitled to.
• Support low income people to buy houses, even if that means they get a low interest loan from Government to do so. So poor kids, like the kind I was, can have stability in their lives and put down roots and get to know their neighbours like I did.
• And finally, that we remember what it is to care for one another and that it's right that we be judged on the way we treat the weakest and most vulnerable in our community.

I know it's hard to hope but I think it's even harder not to have any at all.

Rebecca Solnit⁴ said something recently about people finding hope difficult and that sometimes it's easier for them if you reframe it as "never surrender". Hope feels like it maybe requires something more than a fatigued, wearied 50-something can muster up... but dogged determination? Well, now you're speaking my language. That's right where I live, as it happens.

So by all means have hope for a better future, but I suspect what will carry me through, no matter the election result tomorrow is a combination of spite, bloody-mindedness, a weird affection for my fellow humans, and the simple knowledge that I won't be any different no matter who's in power. I'll just keep on keeping on being a bleeding heart liberal with a potty mouth and and encyclopaedic knowledge of gifs.

Surrender?

¹ Me to anyone puts this on a t-shirt:

² I might only be writing this because one day I will be dead and I'll have no opportunity to say anything at all to anyone (unless I somehow manage to possess the body of Whoopi Goldberg so I can smooch my beloved - whoever they might turn out to be - one last time). But if I'm back from the beyond surely I'll have more important things to do like let everyone know that yes, dogs DO go to Heaven, and no, there's no spot waiting there for Henry Kissinger - but I think I'll probably just chill. PS: I am an Atheist so you can't hold me to any of this, 'cause I'M SLIPPERY.

³ They don't even have sun most of the time and we've got HEAPS. It was fucking brutal outside today in Ōtautahi and I'm a moderately brown person, this is a no-brainer.

⁴ She said this on BlueSky and I replied to her and she LIKED MY REPLY and now I can't find it and I'm annoyed.

⁵ Oooh, an extra, secret footnote at the end! What's this for?

Well, I just wanted to say that if you're finding the politics a bit stressful and you're worried about the election outcome, that you can just not engage with any of it. Vote, obviously, but then put your phone down, don't turn on the election coverage and just watch a movie you really like and chill out. The outcome will be the outcome without you watching as the results come in. I don't personally think there's anything to be gained from hours of pundits commentating an extremely slow moving steeplechase.

If you like that kind of thing, by all means, have at it. But know that it IS optional. The vote isn't going to swing wildly in a different direction because you decided to watch Stepbrothers again.