Damn, Sternal Journalists.
I mean, fuckarino, right? HOOOO PUPPIES. Woof-diddley. HASSA-WASSA-WUDALUGALINARAPPADOOEY.
What I'm trying to say is: I feel a sense of relief which I'm having trouble conveying and processing. But for me, these feelings roughly subdivide into three categories: worrying, rejection, and greatness.
Since I'm having such a difficult time working all the way through them and I generally am not known for my concision, I've limited myself to one run-on sentence on each topic.
Here we go.
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1. Worrying
While I was moderately worried about civil unrest Pokémon-evolving into civil war, I was very pleased to see how (relatively) democratically the whole election was played out, and this is really good especially considering how much of a worrier I am, the state of which has certainly been exacerbated by the fact that during COVID, people are encouraged to defer to the comfort level of the most angsty person, which is very polite and epidemiologically smart, but quite overwhelming to the angsty people who have been counseled to take a chill pill their whole lives, but are now being told to please not chill, as we are relying on your naturally occurring irrational fears to be the voice of reason for the time being and guide us out of the apocalypse, but also, you can't worry too much about militias because either they will do something horrific or you'll spend the next four to eight years worrying about them, and one of those options is horrific but neither is good.
2. Rejection
I've actually been a nominee in four notable elections in my life so far, and I won all but the last, which was, as many last elections of one's life tend to be, the most important and impressive one (therefore worst to have lost); but I learned way more about elections from the many, many times I've been rejected from jobs or creative opportunities or romantic relationships or platonic relationships, and the only thing I actually know about rejections OR elections is that, win or lose, when an election and/or rejection is complete, you should always look back at what you did to make sure you're still making yourself feel good and not hurting anyone, and then look forward to what you're about to do because there are always more opportunities to do what you want even if you lost, but especially if you won.
3. Greatness
A lot of people for the past 4+ years have been like, "Um, America is great already," or "American was never great," or "America is/isn't great, but it *definitely* wasn't great back when you're talking about," and all of those statements are true, but maybe it would be more accurate to focus on America's not-greatness like how a celebrity says something and you're like, "Euuugh, did you hear what Rob Dyrdek said? It's not-great," because greatness is very binary and doesn't exist in any sort of DMZ of nuance whereas "not-greatness" allows you acknowledge the objectively good things about an event, moment, time, thing, or (sometimes) person, while admitting and facing that plenty things associated with it are objectively not-great.
***
And there you have it! Three run-on sentences that accurately but also barely represent my frame of mind right now. And even though all of them lean towards negative (if you consider that greatness is actually "not-greatness" once I'm through with it), I'm very stoked about the national election results, but also a lot of the local election results. I hope all of you are breathing a little easier about the future of democracy, equity, health, and the environment. I know I am, whether or not I'm quite able to broadcast it yet.
If you'd like to think about things that have nothing to do with any of that, listen to my friend Joe Cabello and I's new podcast, which is for now exclusively for Sternal Journalists and his Patreon subscribers.
(It's a ~private RSS~ podcast, so go to Library>Edit>Add A Show by URL in your podcast app and paste this link to subscribe: https://www.patreon.com/rss/joecabello?auth=39600ec96e9b16e439e3d0601e1531e7)
It's called I Need You To See This and it's just about the things we send each other on instagram. We tend to get angry about the commercialization of creativity or, worse, the poorly executed commercialization of creativity. This week: an underplayed song I saw an expensive vinyl poster for on Fairfax and a YouTube rapper who ambushes his passengers with love songs.
And if you want to listen to something just barely related to the world today, listen to 2 Chainz and Mulatto's incredibly fun new song, "Quarantine Thick."
BUT/AND if you want to keep fighting the good fight, join my friend Edgar in donating to ProGeorgia. He posted on instagram a bunch of the grassroots organizations working to flip the Senate blue via the Georgia runoffs, and when Kristen said "Thanks for this info," he said, "Don't want to Julian lecturing me lol."
He, of course, was joking. He is and has been down for many causes without my drunk lecturing, but I also once drunk lectured a group on my birthday about some ways I thought the world should be better. And, even though he is most certainly joking and has a robust moral compass without my lecturing him, I once again feel validated in my birthday drunken behavior. So donate to ProGeorgia. You don't want me to lecture you.
Much love to all. We had something yet! WE HAD SOMETHING YET!
Julian
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