Comments | jethrien: When is it enough?

jethrien

When is it enough?

Mar 28, 2017 20:21

For obvious reasons, I've been feeling a need to be a lot more active in the community and a lot less complacent this year. I've gotten myself onto a bunch of lists. And now I'm trying to sort out what I can actually handle. I'm not going to say that the world was great before last fall--but I guess I was privileged enough to think that if I voted ( Read more... )

Comments 5

edgehopper March 29 2017, 00:36:05 UTC

You know my basic answer (I'm not), but trying to answer it assuming your political opinions ( ... )

jethrien March 29 2017, 17:18:24 UTC

Totally get you on maximizing effects, which I'm trying for. (Although I'm actually surprisingly enjoying the food pantry work. It's totally rote, a lot of sorting and bagging and lifting things, but it's really nice to do something tangible. I helped feed 115 families last weekend.)

It's turning out, though, that there is a lot that can be done at the local level. Which is actually kind of helpful, from the position of not feeling so helpless. With the work of a lot of other people, stuff I did helped push our city council into declaring us a sanctuary city. There are people who need ESL and citizenship exam tutors, there's additional pressure to be put on the sheriff to not waste county resources hunting down people who haven't committed any other crimes, there's a lot of outreach to be done to make sure people know their legal rights and make sure that someone is watching to ensure law enforcement actually follows procedures. There's a ton of stuff that can be done locally to reduce how badly people get hurt, even if we can't ( ... )

shnayder March 29 2017, 23:00:18 UTC

Thinking about very similar questions here. A few things that help me with feeling overwhelmed ( ... )

jethrien March 30 2017, 00:32:03 UTC

Very much aware - trying hard not to overreach and burn out a few months in.

elissali March 31 2017, 06:38:11 UTC

In a word: Yes.

I know exactly how you feel. And you're doing a hell of a lot more than I am right now. But yes, I've thought a lot about how to most effectively help, and how to balance my own sanity with doing something to help. I also don't have an answer for it, either.

*hugs* Thank you for what you are doing, which is quite a lot.