The Job Remains The Same (And A Bit Of Business)
Bit of business first: Squiggle & Heart, The Substack is about to turn one year old! Thank you so much to all of you who have liked posts, reached out to me about my writing and cartoons, and shared with me what they made you think about. Honor doesn’t begin to describe what it feels like to have you here.
Because the calendar is restarting, the bulk of you who subscribed in November 2023 will be auto-renewed. As I mentioned in THIS POST back in May, my content is no longer behind a paywall. For those of you who have a paid subscription, I will be touched and grateful if you decide to let your financial support of my work renew, but please know, if it is no longer an option for you, or if you would like to turn that off for any reason, my content will remain available to you.
(If you care to change your amount, that is available to you, too).
And, last bit of business: in the coming weeks, I’m pretty sure there will be some new video content added to the page. I can’t wait to release this new project I’ve been working on - I hope you enjoy! Sneak peek: it involves kids…
End Business.
Like most humans in the United States (and abroad) with eyes, ears, and a compassionate heart, I am incredibly nervous about the upcoming election - I’m predominantly concerned about the presidential race, but certainly down-ballot as well. Though I am choosing to remain nauseously optimistic1, I am, of course, managing waves of anxious dread as well. The one thing that keeps me coming back to the present moment is my Job - capitalized because I think it is a bigger idea of work than just an individual occupation.
Items on my calendar for the day after the election2 are the following: therapy; make weekly cookies for building staff; draw; teach; volunteer; help a student; dinner with friend. Nothing about the leader of this broken nation will change my Job that day or any day going forward: care for my own mental health; say thank you; engage in creation; support, listen to, and deeply see my students; celebrate and support 10-year-olds in Hell’s Kitchen; celebrate and support 21(ish)-year-olds in Astor Place; be present and uplifted with and by the people I care about.
No leader changes that Job. No government changes that Job. When I made the conscious shift years ago to organize how I thought about my life in terms of service, everything got both harder and easier. It is harder because sentient beings are suffering all the time, including me, and to choose to help them/us means to be shattered over and over again, forever. It is easier because the occupation is pure and simple: find the kindness, plant it, till it, and keep re-piecing yourself together, over and over.
2017 was, arguably, a terrible year. Watching the Obamas gracefully hand power to a man-child who didn’t want the job was excruciating, and things got worse from there. However, also in 2017, a 10-year-old little girl named Sarah, who I’d never met before, burst through the double doors of The 52nd Street Project Clubhouse, ran straight to me, ambush-hugged me, and completely changed my life forever.
Wonderful things will happen no matter who is president.
Terrible things will happen no matter who is president.
Our Job remains the same.
I can’t take credit for that brilliant term - I saw it in an NBC News headline.
I recognize we may have no results on this day, but let’s pretend we will for the sake of this argument.