What I Did All Weekend Instead of Looking At Instagram
Or any coverage of the Terrible Man and his Carnival of Broligarchs
It’s Wednesday, January 22. I haven’t looked at Instagram for 5 days. I do not miss it at all. I still exist! If you’re reading this, good news—you exist as well.
I also didn’t watch or listen to any of the coverage of the fascist hate parade spectacle that happened on Monday. I understand if you did. I limited my exposure to his face and voice. I understand if you did not, or could not, and if you are someone who used your time and energy to bear witness, to recap and document it all, I appreciate you. I have now read a number of those recaps. Thank you.
I am aware of and enraged by the cruel, cruel bullshit: the executive orders, the billionaire Nazi fuckboi salute, the torrent of spite and fearmongering and stupid, stupid “policy.”
I want to be incredibly clear: this is not about being “checked out!” This is not ignorance-is-bliss, hands-clapped-over-my-ears, la la la la everything-is-fine. It’s also not “self-care.” It’s strategy. It’s survival. It is agency in a time of AI, automation, and algorithms.
It’s…what feels right to me right now. I can be painfully aware of what is going on in this country and this world without consuming constant rage-bait. I can engage in more impactful work if my brain is not distracted by memed-out activism and flat graphic squares imploring people to care. And I say this as someone who has been sharing memes and graphics and DO SOMETHING! squares on social media for YEARS.
At this moment I’m acutely aware that I want to have more control over what I read and think and watch and feel. I want you to make choices too which is precisely why I’m not going to tell you to get off social media or turn off the news or stop sharing memes and squares. These sentiments I’m sharing are reminders to myself.
We have so many tools. Let’s make smart choices about the ones that work best for each of us, for the jobs we need to do. One of my tools is this Substack, which I’ll continue to use to share resources, ideas, strategies, and perspectives. I like it here.
In the days that led up to the inauguration, here are some things I did, some places I directed my attention and care and energy. I began writing this list of What I Did as a personal exercise, and then figured I would share it here. I am listing these things, naming them, because they happened. I experienced them with my body, in real life, at this very particular point in history. It feels helpful to remind myself of that—makes me feel grounded in the moment, gets me out of a spinning brain, and helps me feels connected to so much beyond this particular blip in time.
I went to the gym and lifted weights. I listened to loud music and I PR’d my deadlift. The most I’ve lifted in years. I felt strong, satisfied, and in control.
I took the ferry to San Francisco—the most beautiful commute in the Bay Area—to meet my wife. It was sunny and “cold” (in the 50s! Freezing!) The ferry was filled with people oooing and ahhhhing over the views from the boat, laughing and drinking beers and posing for photos as we sailed beneath the Bay Bridge. Everything looked so intact. I felt grateful to live here.
We went to the MOMA and we looked at art. It felt like everyone there was gay (all ages! all kinds!) and that was perfect. We took in Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), the epic Kara Walker installation. I’m pretty sure my jaw was dropped the whole time. The massive automaton named Fortuna spat out fortunes. Absolutions. Look what she told us:
The woman next to me pointed to "Resolve to divorce social media" and said out loud "I deleted Instagram today!"
The Amy Sherald exhibit: we stood and stared at the kissing sailors, teared up in the presence of Michelle Obama. I felt reverent, honored, reminded and reminded of how much we need art. What it does, can do, will keep doing. We saw the exhibit about queer skateboarding culture and found Miriam’s art.
Then we saw the Consuelo Kanaga exhibit—I had never heard of her. How have I never heard of her?! Her incredible photos, her work documenting sharecroppers in the South, her connections to Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz. I felt humbled and excited—rad women, they are endless.
We went to a big gay birthday party for two friends who are celebrating big special birthdays. It was so queer and perfect. It seemed like everyone there was in Portland last weekend to see the Team Dresch reunion show. I met new people and saw friends I haven’t seen for years. I recognized faces from college, from early 2000s Lexington Club days (well, nights), from so many different spaces and time periods. I also met my therapist in person which we knew was going to happen so we were prepared but it was still exciting and surreal.
I talked on the phone to a friend who told me, through tears, that she’d thrown her back out and was having excruciating spasms. I got in the car and drove to her apartment to deliver muscle relaxers, a heating pad, and a topical ointment that my professional athlete friend got from her acupuncturist. I felt glad to be able to show up for my friend like that.
I reached out to friends in LA because that disaster isn’t over yet. Another fire, Kelli reports. Near Griffith Observatory, helicopters over her apartment. She’s keeping busy by helping the cat rescue groups she works with to track down foster kittens and families impacted by the fires. She just learned that Bikini, the kitten she’d fostered who went to a home in Altadena, has been found in a tree, burned and singed but alive, after being missing for a week. The home is gone, but the kitten’s OK.
I wrote, continuing to close in on the completion of the new draft of the book I’m writing with Kamau Bell and Dr. Kelly Rafferty. A follow-up to Do the Work, it’s a book for kids about white supremacy. How timely. How very fucking evergreen indeed. I edited several of the comics: the one about Rosa Parks’ childhood—how her grandfather taught her to sleep with her clothes on so they could escape in the night if and when the KKK came to their door, how she was 8 years old when she read a book that argued that Black people were indeed human, and she realized that meant there were people who thought that she was not human, who needed to be convinced. The comic about Andrew and Charlotte Wade and Ann and Carl Braden, the ones about different Abolitionist tactics. I rewrote a section on the scientific racism of the Enlightenment (skulls, taxonomies, men, oh my). I read the brilliant chapter Kelly has been developing on prisons, policing, and the criminal injustice system. I added data about the steady increase in hate crimes in public schools over the past 5+ years. This is incredibly intense and necessary work and I cannot wait to finish this book.
I reinstalled Make America Kittens Again, the plug-in for Chrome that replaces images of That Motherfucker with images of kittens.
I listened to a lot of Neko Case and prepped the questions I’m going to ask her when my wildest dream comes true and I get to be in conversation with her at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz. We’ll be discussing her incredible new memoir The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, and I’ll be working my ass off not to dissolve into a puddle of fangirl goo.
I texted with my kids because they were at their dad’s for the weekend, and I walked over to visit them (because their dad lives three blocks away). I admired my daughter’s thrift store haul, we sat in the yard in the sun and played with the dog.
I listened, as I do every single day, to KEXP, the radio station out of Seattle (and now 92.7 FM here in the Bay Area!) that is more than a radio station to me. It’s a true community of music lovers and good humans that I feel so connected to. I knew they’d have our backs on Monday and they did, playing hours of Civil Rights freedom songs and folk songs and funk songs and audio clips of Dr. King’s speeches. And when Kevin Sur said “I’m an Indigenous DJ and I want to be the one to tell you: Biden has commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier.” I burst into tears.
I sucked it up and rage-cleaned a few clutter-zones I’ve been avoiding. The junk drawer AND the “cord drawer” which was 80% terrible octopus of obsolete e-waste and 20% Oh Wow That’s Where That Useful Cord Has Been. I felt satisfied and now I just keep opening the drawers to admire how not-cluttered they are.
I continued my backyard project—I am building myself a Room of One’s (My) Own. Also known as an office. My office! I cannot wait, but actually I need to wait, because before I can build it I have to clear the space for it and build the foundation, etc etc. So, lots of digging and hauling and moving dirt.
I hung out with my wife and did sweet mundane domestic things like eating dinner on the floor in front of the TV and making lists and checking things off them. I thought about how us just existing together is a radical and powerful thing. I do not take it for granted at all.
I watched basketball: the debut of Unrivaled, the new women’s 3x3 league, and a riveting match-up between my stepson’s 6th grade boys team vs another 6th grade boys team. We won in a nail-biting finish that included a deep 3 at the buzzer!
I mourned the passing of Cecile Richards. When I heard the news I looked to Jessica Valenti, knowing that she would have the words for the moment. Her Substack Abortion, Everyday is such a prime example of how to do meaningful, consistent, focused work in a time of chaotic overwhelm.
I texted, as I do every single day, with my four best friends. Topics covered included: the installation of a bidet; a beloved niece getting her own apartment, and the pantry getting stocked with the items from another friend’s father’s home because he recently passed; soccer; salads; football; singing Christmas songs at karaoke during January; torn labrums; plantar fasciitis; mix CDs; the heartbreaking realities of aging parents, dementia, and father/son dynamics; home remodel plans; cats. We contain multitudes.
I drove to San Jose with my sister to hang out with our mom and her extensive, incredible collection of Christmas decor. We saw it all during Christmas, of course, but before she puts it all back in the boxes (that go into the shed my dad built for the express purpose of storing the extensive, incredible collection of Christmas decor) she wanted us to a) give her some oooooohs and aaaaaahs and appreciations of how hard she works to decorate and b) identify our favorite items that we would like to carefully wrap in bubble wrap and put in our own boxes to take home and c) help her cull through it all and say goodbye to the Santas that are no longer serving her. Specifically the ones with creepy faces. We filled two boxes with Christmas kitsch that will go to the thrift store (a strategic note that we’re taking everything to the Savers thrift store near our house, not the one near her house that she goes to every Tuesday, because we want to prevent her from buying back her items or just seeing them on the shelves and feeling sad!)
At my parents’ house an amazing thing happened which was that my dad didn’t turn on the news. Not once. We watched college football, nature shows, and then a movie. My uncle said Fuck that guy and my dad agreed and raged against him until my mom told him that’s enough, we know. I felt so glad that my parents share my values. I don’t take that for granted at all, either.
I read Anne Helen Peterson’s Substack about The Social Media Sea Change and I nodded and mmmm-hmmmed and then instead of posting about it I just thought about it. And now I’m writing about it here. Thanks for reading.
XO,
Kate
I love all of this for you 🫶🏻