A Friday Chat About a LONG Week
Featuring Billfolder rmybrat!
NICOLE: Happy Friday! It’s been another LONG week.
RMYBRAT: This was one of those weeks where you alternately want to read all the things and also want to hide under the covers.
NICOLE: I feel like we’re in for lots more of those. I guess it’s a good excuse to invest in high thread counts, or something.
Or turn off Twitter. Did you hear that 1 million people just quit Twitter?
RMYBRAT: I did not. I have to admit, I have a Twitter account, but I rarely use it. I feel like I fell into a technology gap for about a year there and missed the boat on some things. I was living in the sticks and didn’t have internet at home, and my workplace was super strict.
Sometimes I really miss rural life, though. I couldn’t order cookies at 1am. That adds up fast.
NICOLE: Hahahaha very true.
Where can you order just cookies, though? Seamless and GrubHub and the rest of them all make you order, like, $30 worth of food at once.
OR DO YOU GET $30 IN COOKIES because that sounds amazing.
RMYBRAT: Oh no, we have a cookie place that specializes in delivery. It’s called Hot Box and they arrive warm. They’re slightly under-cooked and amazing.
NICOLE: I’m looking them up right now and they look SO GOOD
RMYBRAT: That’s what happens when you live in a college town.
NICOLE: I keep wishing someone would invent an ice cream van for adults. Like, you could get it to deliver fancy ice cream to your door.
RMYBRAT: You can also get booze delivered here, which is…close?
NICOLE: WHAT
RMYBRAT: Again, college town.
NICOLE: Sure, but my town has like four colleges and I am not aware of any booze delivery services. Maybe I haven’t looked for them.
Oh, no, they exist. Seattle has plenty of alcohol delivery services.
RMYBRAT: It’s a weird little bubble here in Missouri. Sometimes I forget the rest of the state is not like this.
And then Vicky Hartlzer reminds me about the rest of the state. Sigh.
NICOLE: DOUBLE SIGH.
RMYBRAT: Yeah, she’s our local representative. I did not vote for her. She’s the one who compared trans folks to ISIS? Inspiration for Trump’s trans ban.
And is bragging about it.
So.
NICOLE: I keep thinking that all the people I see tweeting and donating and marching for social justice should mean something. And then, you know, you get news stories that seem to indicate it doesn’t.
RMYBRAT: I’ve been binge-watching the CNN decades series (the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc) and the thing that really strikes me about how protests were different in prior eras.
I think our modern media consumption is so different that the message gets diluted. For example, during Watergate, that was the ONLY thing on TV, in the paper, etc. You couldn’t not pay attention. And it forced people, all people, to engage with it.
Now we can choose to put our heads in the sand so much more easily, which fractures everyone.
NICOLE: And if we look around, it’s hard to tell the most important thing to protest because there are so many things.
RMYBRAT: Exactly. There’s a lot of dazzle and distract, which is not to say that some things are more important than others, but if we’re running from one thing to the next we’re getting exhausted a lot faster.
I have a friend in St. Joseph who is a mega-organizer, and I literally do not know how he has the emotional energy to constantly keep at it.
NICOLE: Wait, is “mega-organizer” a job, or were you just modifying “organizer?”
RMYBRAT: Just modifying. He’s relentless. Voter registration drives, town halls, marches, protests, attending conferences on political organizing, he was a Bernie delegate, and on and on and on. I don’t know when the man sleeps.
And then I feel bad for not doing as much as I should/could?
NICOLE: Yep, me too.
But everything in balance, I guess. Even with the balance tipped slightly towards THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
RMYBRAT: I still have moments where it hits me all over again. I’ve actually been seeing a psychiatrist, and when I told her the election was the tipping point for my depression to go from “kind of generally bummed” to “everything is shit” she said that was not an uncommon reaction. She’s seeing a lot of it.
My son was very upset. So one of the things we tried to do as a family is find small ways we can make a difference. We volunteer once a month at the food bank and that helps to feel less helpless.
NICOLE: That’s smart. And helping your son now will help him help others both now and when he’s older.
RMYBRAT: Absolutely. I emphasize to him that at one time, we needed their help. After my husband and I separated I was so, so poor. So we talk about how that help enabled us to now be in a better place, and we need to give back.
Sometimes when I’m commenting I feel like I talk about my kid a lot, and I know not a ton of Billfolders have them, so I worry that I talk about him too much?
NICOLE: No, not at all! I love hearing about kids! And I bet more Billfolders have them than we realize. We should ask them to sound off in the comments.
Any other parting Friday thoughts?
RMYBRAT: I am looking forward to a weekend of no obligations. My Airbnb is done and I don’t have to stress about it any more. Such a huge weight off. Now I have to find a new thing to talk about in my Friday estimates!
NICOLE: Well, I hope you have a great weekend.
RMYBRAT: Thanks, you too!
