I’m deeply worried about our country, our Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law. The level of anti-feminism is at an all-time high for my lifetime, and that scares the shit out of me–particularly for those in my daughter’s generation who growing up without prior context. I am an activist and I work for change. I write fiction and essays, occasionally poetry, and I focus on difficult topics.

And I’m happy as hell, personally.

I’m tired of the brooding/unhappy activist/writer archetype. It’s stale. It’s unnecessary. If we’re going to be transgressive against an oppressive culture, let’s also be transgressive against the narrative that those working for change are supposed to be killjoys. After all, that narrative is meant to make people dig their heads in the sand, to the benefit of the dictators and inequalities of the world.

My life is fulfilling; I’m doing work I care about; I believe in the power of social change and that it is something we can effect. I look at horrible things all day long at work, and still maintain this chipper attitude. This goes against the grain.

In a brilliant piece on his Substack, “Make the Refusal to Quit Go Viral,” Scot Nagakawa writes,

“People perform exhaustion in order to belong, and then, inevitably, they begin to feel what they perform.

This is not a criticism of anyone. The threats to democracy have been real and relentless. The exhaustion is genuine. But there is a difference between feeling something and making it the defining identity of a movement. When exhaustion becomes a tribal virtue – when to be tired is to signal that you understand the gravity of the moment, and to not be tired is to seem naive or privileged – we have given the authoritarian project something it badly wants.”