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It relieved some of the pressure, mostly self-induced. In some ways, the realization was freeing. The world will keep on turning with or without my work. I am not a delivery person or a grocery store clerk or a truck driver. I am not a medical doctor or a nurse or a radiology technician. When the reality of the pandemic finally hit me, when I realized this was going to last more than a year, maybe even more than two years, when we started to understand who in this world is truly essential, I found myself contemplating how inessential my work feels. I had plenty of work but it was hard to focus. All that preparation made me feel a semblance of control even though very little was in my control. I made sure we had cash on hand and a survival kit. I found masks and latex gloves and hand sanitizer. I stocked up on canned goods and water and searched, often vainly, for toilet paper. I finally had time to get to know my house, to take stock of how prepared we were or weren’t for calamity. After three weeks, it was the longest I had been in one place since 2014. In March, most of my paying work disappeared indefinitely. I often find myself reciting these atrocities as I bear witness to their accumulation and it doesn’t feel real. Ignoring a pandemic and allowing thousands of people to die every single day, for months on end. Dismantling education and what remained of the social net. A relentless number of federal executions. The relentless confirmation of conservative judges. Withholding federal funding from blue states. Building an incomplete, failing border wall. Banning Muslims from entering the country. With each new atrocity, I wonder what terrible thing this administration is capable of, I tell myself things cannot get any worse and then they reveal themselves anew. I have been reminded of the limits of language, that sometimes, the state of the world is such that words cannot adequately express dismay, disgust, frustration, fury. As a writer, as a woman, I have struggled with what to says beyond expressing horror at the cruelty the Trump administration demonstrates at every opportunity.
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The past year… the past four years have been overwhelming.
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Welcome to The Audacity, a newsletter and The Audacious Book Club.