These last few months have had me designing a stock trading application for a major trading house. To design this I spend my day looking at stock trading applications and financial tools online, which means I’ve had a very close (and mandatory) look at the recent financial meltdown, as well as the long run-up to it. There has been a lot of election news interspersed with it and this, combined with my political junkie tendencies, has led to an ever-heightened feelings of fear, anger, incapacitation and sick glee at the rapid downward spiral of Things in General.
It has interfered with my sleep.
I went to Seattle a few weeks ago to see a play written and put on by an old friend and to see my best friend play a noise show. Steeping in all this creativity really put a point on it that I haven’t been doing shit but working and steeping in wretched political and financial news these last 9 months and that it’s no way to go through life. I’m feeling rusty in doing community work and art. So, I’m starting small.
My not-so evil scheme: register voters at the coffee shop next door.
Yes, that’s right, I sacrifice an hour each Tuesday and Thursday drinking tea, flirting with the cute staff and reading the paper, all while pestering every single person who goes into Progress about registering. Oh, if all things were this easy. So far I’ve registered 14 people. For whatever reason, this has made me feel a lot better about this crappy election. It’s nonpartisan, I’m not asking for money, it falls in line with my Iowan small-d democracy beliefs and I don’t have to deal with any nutjobs at campaign headquarters, which my braver and stronger friend is doing.
It won’t save the world, but I’m sleeping better.
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