How's Your Existential Dread Doing?

The world is on fire and it's the perfect time to take a vacation.

A live look at my car later this morning as we barrel south on I-81 for a long overdue vacation. I like how Microsoft’s AI image creator gave me nine tires.

“My Substack, My Rules” has sort of been a loose mantra for me with Dirt Nap. When I first started planning this project, I opened a Google Doc and set out some basic principles that I wanted to follow:

1. Write for me, first. Write for them, second. I have a healthy ego. It runs four miles a day, eats right and thrives. This Substack was for me as a means of expression and to work out whatever was going on in my head in the days and weeks after my father-in-law’s passing. It’s still going because I have more to do.

2. Publish on a schedule. I need some order in my life and with my projects. Setting a timeline — weekly, on Friday, first thing in the morning — seemed like a good plan. No complaints here.

3. Be social. I do my best to respond to comments. Some times I miss them. Sorry.

4. No politics. To paraphrase Michael Jordan, Republicans grieve too. Besides, this isn’t a space for politics. We have enough emotions and feelings going on here. I’ve been fairly good about this too. Well, until today.

There’s a lot of societal dread out there. Some of it is personal, as my friend Jane wrote about earlier this year. Some of it is collective. Your phone blinks regularly with news alerts about the presidential race, what’s happening in Europe, the Middle East, or the latest hurricane. Biden needs to drop out. Trump is an authoritarian. The Supreme Court is compromised. It’s enough for you to go on one of those sensory deprivation retreats¹ to hide.

Grief in Times of Tragedy

Except that you can’t.

In 2016, there was an underlying feeling that Hilary Clinton would win the presidency. She won the debates handily. She was the best prepared, the most intelligent, and most presidential. The polls showed her leading. It was a no-brainer until it wasn’t. There have been plenty of post-mortems, but the election came down to a couple of factors:

1. Her opponent wasn’t PC and spoke without a filter, tapping into raw emotion.

2. The media was painting a Clinton win, so there was no need to vote.

3. Clinton lacked the enthusiasm of the person that preceded her, so people weren’t moved to vote.

The result was chaotic. The Supreme Court has been tilted, if not for a generation, than for a good long time. Protections that people took for granted have dissolved, as a result. While the Covid-19 pandemic might still have occurred, the nation would have had a functioning pandemic response office. Inflation got out of control, largely because of stock buybacks enabled by the 2017 tax cut. The Mexican-U.S. border is in such crisis that the Republican party killed its own bill to alleviate some of that pressure.

My wife is a high school teacher. From the period of 2016-2020, she had students ask her questions like: “Is it really illegal now to_______?” or “Did the president just ban______?” And her answer was the same: she would answer their question factually, then add in “if you don’t like it, then vote.”

She stopped doing that after she got CRT’ed. Remember when the myth of critical race theory in our public schools had it’s moment? Yeah, she was accused of it after teaching the civil rights movement of the 1950s-1970s. Martin Luther King. March on Washington. Rosa Parks². Segregation. Brown vs. Board of Education. You know, the shit that might be on New York State’s farkakteh American History Regents exam.

Now she just silently seethes.

There was a time when I was a Republican. I started listening to (don’t hate me too much) Rush Limbaugh when I was in middle school. He was brash. He was bombastic. He appealed directly to my impressionable brain. I got to college and moderated a bit. I stopped being so public about my politics, with the exception of a column that I wrote for our college newspaper advocating for the write-in of a couple of professors.

Working for a nonprofit moderated me. I still believed in some tenets of the Republican party but of the Eisenhower variety — conservative when it comes to money, liberal when it comes to human beings. There was once a space for us, even after Ronald Reagan.

I no longer recognized the Republican party in 2016 when I changed my enrollment to “Unaffiliated.” No grief or loss there for me, but my politics stopped being part of my identity long ago. I vote on issues as related to my life³, not a platform.

America has an uncomfortable history with choosing the bright and flashy candidate and not the safe route. In 2020, everyone wanted normalcy again. Remember? We came out of 2020 with a safe candidate running against the incumbent and everyone wanted a return to normal. And, as I sit here and write this, I have the same feeling that many of you have; that we’re about to regress and backslide towards an unhinged individual that appeals to our worst instincts and will give our most extreme ideologues opportunity to finish what they started.

That darkness retreat sounds good, right?

I don’t have an answer to any of this, and I apologize if I come across as a fearmongering columnist from The New York Times. Committing to vote is an important first step. Ensuring that the people you know will vote is second. The other stuff? No clue.

Mostly, I wanted you — dear reader — to know that you’re not alone in feeling this way. Give yourself some grace and peace. Turn off your phone for a few hours. Get adjusted by your chiropractor. Do something for you. Go on vacation.

We’ll get back on topic next week.

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Final thoughts on finality

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Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.

We are always looking for contributors and story ideas. Drop a line at jaredpaventi@substack.com.

I’m all over social media if you want to chat. Find me on Facebook, Twitter/X and Bluesky, and LinkedIn. I’m on Threads and Instagram at @jaredpaventi.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. For additional mental health resources, visit our list.

1. Along those lines, I highly recommend an hour in a tank at your local float spa. Worth every dollar.

2. Top 10 song in my universe.

3. I’m such a wishy-washy both-sides voter. I think that cops have a really tough job, yet we need to change how we police. I think taxes should be higher across the board (right?) but flatter. I think we should have more nuclear weapons in our arsenal and universal child care. I believe in a strong national defense and a stronger border, but also the humane treatment of, well, humans. I think we should have a national ID card and federalized elections. I really am the worst voter to appeal to.