Onward

Like many of you, I’ve spent the past week mourning the election. I gave myself a week to bawl, fulminate, contemplate moving elsewhere, and eat ice cream out of the carton in my pajamas at two in the afternoon.

Now, it’s time to stop wallowing and act. For me, that means finishing my third novel, which I see as my best immediate hope for making change and supporting the progressive values I believe in: tolerance, equality, fact-based governance, and truthfulness & civility in our public discourse.

One thing that seems very clear to me is that we liberals have been talking mostly to each other for the last couple of years. And as comforting and self-satisfying as that has been, it failed spectacularly as a campaign strategy and will be equally ineffective going forward. We’re like the grownups in “Peanuts”: mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah.

So, no more talk for me for a while, and no more dawdling for hours on Facebook and other social media. I need to focus. We all do, if we want to recognize our country four years from now. Let’s go DO. Go write, teach, parent, protest, give, vote, run for office, and fight for the kind of world we want to live in.