Like everyone else, I’m watching the news and scanning the internet every few minutes for updates on the hurricane approaching Florida. While I’m at it I check in on the dozen or so major wildfires burning near my own home in California.

I am really pissed off right now. Someone just did something that messed up my life — not horrifically, but a busload more than I’d like. I keep telling myself it’s no big deal. But right now I could chew up that bus and spit out the bolts. I could fight a bear and win. I’m that mad.

Humans try to pain-proof everything. Like anxious new parents baby-proofing an apartment, we soften bad news, avoid stressful situations, encase the bodies of our dead in cushioned containers. We try to soften every corner in the world.

Yesterday was one of those days. In my life-coaching mode I always tell people those days aren’t happening to them, but for them. “One day,” I assure them, “you’ll look back and think, “Oh, thank God the car broke down and the dog barfed on me and I had a gruesome argument and got food…

I didn’t wake up on the morning of November 9. I hadn’t slept on the night of the election, had lain in bed still and frozen, more devastated than I’d felt since September 11 became another name for horror.