Content Warning: This post discusses political unrest in the United States, fascism, censorship, government violence, and the emotional impact of ongoing news cycles. Please read with care.
I’m honestly battling with this question myself. I have no motivation to do anything that brings me joy while America feels like it’s under siege by fascism. Every day there’s a new headline, a new policy, a new act of violence or erasure, and I haven’t been able to look away. It feels irresponsible to look away. It feels dangerous to be comfortable.
I have deadlines. I have ideas. I have things I want to create. And yet I can’t bring myself to do them, because it feels wrong to care about my projects when the world feels like it’s actively on fire. I’ll sit down to write something simple, something I normally love—like a quick review of a book I just finished—and my brain just locks up. The words won’t come. Nothing feels important enough. Nothing feels right.
Instead, I get lost in the feed. Doomscrolling becomes a kind of paralysis. One post bleeds into the next: another tragedy, another marginalized group under attack, another dystopian ad shoved between human suffering like it’s just more content. Everything blurs together until even the things that once grounded me start to feel hollow.
Nothing feels right. I thought maybe if I wrote down how I’m feeling, it would snap me out of it—get my ass in gear, at least a little. Like naming it would shrink it. So far, no luck. I know there are people out there with more nuanced takes, more hopeful perspectives, better advice. I know someone, somewhere, has figured out how to balance joy and rage and survival.
But I haven’t. Not yet.
All I can land on right now is this: doing the things we love can be an act of resistance. Choosing to read, to write, to create, to care about art and stories and each other in a system that wants us exhausted, numb, and compliant—that matters, even when it feels small. Especially when it feels small.
I don’t have advice. I don’t have wisdom to offer. Just the honest truth of where I’m at.
And the truth is this: the book community, and reading in general, has to be political. Because you don’t get to enjoy the things you love if the government can decide your life is disposable. You don’t get escapism if survival isn’t guaranteed. Stories don’t exist in a vacuum when people are being silenced, censored, or killed.
Loving books, loving art, loving joy—it doesn’t make you naïve. It means you understand what’s at stake.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
