*exhales, but maintains really quite a lot of tension throughout the body anyway*

so many feelings!

 

- thank god, etc. I almost cried, and maybe still will; this ate up a lot of mental/emotional space.

 

- this actually is good; the president is just one guy but does get to appoint a whole lot of people; also there's a lot of symbolism and diplomacy and stuff. ok cool, relieved, whew! uh oh here come the rest of the thoughts...

- oh god for all this hype about Biden, we basically lost the election. We thought we'd be at 52 in the senate - but we're at 48 and hoping against hope for Georgia. We lost seats in the house. We lost a lot in state legislatures. If like a few hundred thousand votes went the other way, we would be either still fretting, or unconditionally sobbing. As it is, we will probably be unable to do anything for at least 2 years and then there'll be another election involving...

 

- oh god the next Trump - a new strongman dictator who's actually competent? we are so lucky that our first Trumpist president was this one and just mostly bad at stuff in addition to being corrupt, lying, racist, sexist, selfish, and awful. The next one might be good at stuff too.

- point is, Trump is not a one off, he is a product of his party, which voted for him more than ever this time. can we please stop pandering to the center and start doing policies that most of America likes and just winning the game of elections more? how are we so bad at this?

- ... speaking of "winning elections more", I tried volunteering in a new way (technical help with sending emails for a state house candidate in FL.); it was kinda painful and I don't want to do it any more probably. plus we lost big. uh, gotta keep playing around with good ways to help. I know there is a third option besides "sacrifice my life doing drudgery work that I hate" and "sit back and watch while the world explodes" but I still haven't found it.

...

still, despite all these very true feelings, I do feel some relief, and it's nice.