I still didn't get to sleep 'til 2am last night, so I'm still waiting for the return of early morning runs and days full of energy...

But I *do* feel my executive function returning (tasks are getting finished, and I'm about to catch up on--eesh--eight long-overdue WhatsApp conversations before classes 😬), so I just want to call it now:

Thank you *so* much for sitting with me through this last nuisance of a downcycle. Everything was unbearably hard to process for a bit, but we keep swimming. 💛

(It's actually going to be a great verbal exercise. We're working on complex noun phrases, but the code-switching required to pull off this sentence effortlessly for mid-range English students will be fun!)

I'm putting together readings for my students tonight from recent news, but this excerpt's going in just because it made me laugh:

“Actually seeing this one-to-one increase, I was like, wow,” says a study author, Kathy Willis, a marine socio-ecologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

(Journalists are supposed to edit quotes with some grace, but sometimes the speaker doesn't offer much to work with. 🙃 I still would've written this differently.)

For today’s Rewind Wednesday, I mark a very difficult Passover by reflecting on a diverse range of Jewish perspectives flattened by war. In times of global violence with strong ethno-religious components, it can be incredibly hard to remember our humanity amid constant pushes for groupthink to come first.

But this is still vitally important work--for human dignity now, and any hope of a better world ahead.

#GlobalHumanism
#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-stories-of-judaism-lost-to-war

All right. Good night, good luck, and good crimes to you all. ❤️

Tonight's aim is to get to bed early.

That is it.

Straight to bed after classes. No screen time.

And up before dawn again, for the first time in weeks.

These bones need to run.

This meatsack needs to flap.

I need my energy BACK. 😬

Today’s Tough Times Tuesday blends literature, domestic assault, and climate economics into a broader meditation on an abiding media myth around the ability to win over people who do harm by trying to find their “love language”.

Is it fair to fellow civic participants to presume that everyone’s operating in good faith when it comes to matters as serious as tackling climate change?

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/scenes-from-our-boring-dystopia

But! I do have today's newsletter drafted. 🎉 Just need to run an errand for tonight's classes, and then hopefully I can come back, revise easily, and build on this momentum with another finished freelance project this afternoon.

NOT TODAY, CAKE. YOU SHALL NOT DEFEAT ME TODAY.

Some schools of therapy talk about us having an "inner child". Mine is the kid from The Hours.

Sometimes, when I'm having a tough time getting through a simple task, I hear little Richie looking up helplessly at his mum trying to make a cake and barely holding it together.

That fragile, small-voiced

"Mommy, it isn't that difficult" and her answering "I know, sweet pea. I know it isn't difficult. It's just..."

gets me every time.

Some days it really is hard, though, to make the darned cake.

Anyway, good morning, and good Tuesday to all of you. ☕

We have *so* much psychological damage to address in the coming years.

But we're not going to heal overnight (if at all). And no coronal mass ejection is going to save us from problems online, alas.

All we can do is try not to be angry with ourselves and others for living through such stupid, cruel, and stressed-out times.

We're all doing the best we can. 🫂💛

Infowars are so powerful, and we're so ill-prepared to meet them.

Yesterday, I was struck by how much media illiteracy reigns. How gullible we still are in every news cycle.

Is it genuine?

Or do people know full well what they're weaponizing?

That's the kind of despair infowars breed.

One no longer knows if one's neighbours are being honestly manipulated or eager participants in their own manipulation.

All one knows is that propaganda reigns, and has made the world unsafer yet again.

Sleep well, folks.

I know we're all tending to our part of the map as best we can. 🫂

Despondent, frustrated, disappointed, dismayed...

It's been a day of deep feeling for me.

Maybe for you, too.

Maybe for reasons that differ from my own.

Goodness knows, we're all over the map here, each caught up in our part of it.

Which is the real work of awful times, no? Scare and divide. Drive us deeper into silos.

My wish for us all:

May we one day feel like we can widen our circles of care again.

May we not be guided forever by all the anger, fear, and cynicism of this rotten age.

Today’s Monday Media Review eases us gently into a new week.

We’re going to revisit some of these themes in heavier ways later on, but for now… let’s just enjoy a nice podcast about pasta, shall we?

#BetterWorldsTheory

https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/when-even-simple-histories-get-it

Brain is still like sludge today. Finishing tasks has been hard this past week - everything takes twice or thrice as long - and even yesterday I couldn't get to sleep before 2am, so I was "off" again this morning.

Off for a wee walk to try working off the frayed nerves, and then hopefully I can catch up today on four overdue tasks.

The trick is not being extra despondent for being so behind. Being angry with myself for being depressed won't help me to get ahead in workflow again.

Brains suck.