The OCD Diaries

March 20, 2020March 20, 2020

Physical Distancing Doesn’t Mean Social Distancing

Amid the pandemic, we hear a lot about social distancing, which produces images of people isolated and alone, cut off from the world. The sound of it alone can bring on bouts of depression. What’s really happening is anything but — if you’re willing to use the tools available.

Mood Music:

On the work side, we may all be at home, but through GoTo Meeting, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Facetime, my colleagues and I are getting a lot of time together. There are the meetings, of course, but a lot of us are also using these platforms to have lunch together and just banter:

Checking in with my colleague, Hillary Blair

Some of my friends in the security industry have set up Zoom meetings and kept them running. Folks can come and go as they please.

My friend and former boss, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis, has used these tools for family dinners and spiritual gatherings. The following is posted with his permission:

In some respects, I think our extra efforts to socialize these days has been good for us. There’s a certain solidarity in all this.

I hope we don’t lose that when the pandemic ends.

March 19, 2020March 19, 2020

5 Examples of Humanity’s Best Amid COVID-19

The war footing we’re on with COVID-19 remains serious and will be for some time to come. We can’t let our guard down or return our lives to normal — whatever that was — for the time being.

But we can put the future into a better perspective. As harsh as life seems right now, there are myriad examples of humanity doing the right things and seeing measurable progress. Here are five of them.

Mood Music:

The First US Vaccine Test Has Happened

The first person in the US was injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading the American charge in a global hunt for protection.

Antibodies from Recovered Patients Could Protect People at Risk

With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, a Johns Hopkins immunologist is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. The treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within weeks.

SK Reports More Recoveries Than Coronavirus for First Time

South Korea reported more recoveries from the coronavirus than new infections on Friday for the first time since its outbreak emerged in January. The downward trend in daily cases raises hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic center outside China may be slowing.

Uber Eats Waives Delivery Fees for 100,000 Restaurants

One of many, many examples of private enterprise stepping in to help everyone stay afloat — with full bellies.

Booze Makers Are Using Their Talents to Make Free Hand Sanitizer

Distilleries across America are stepping up to mitigate the shortage of hand sanitizer by making their own and giving it away. Another example of the best humanity has to offer.

Hang in there, folks. The helpers are out in full force.

March 18, 2020March 18, 2020

Finding Meaning in a COVID-19 War Footing

Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.

Mood Music:

This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:

The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University

Reading this energized me.

My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.

But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.

So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.

Then I saw the DealBook article.

It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.

Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.

Rock on, fellow soldiers.

March 17, 2020March 17, 2020

Joking About COVID-19

“Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.”
Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson

Several lifetimes ago, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. I saw a lot of tragedy and depravity in that line of work: fatal car wrecks, families burned out of homes, murder and, yes, health crises.

Mood Music:

https://youtu.be/QPNqojbyIDk

I used to walk over homeless people sleeping in the Lynn Police Department entrance, the place wreaking of piss. I’d sit in courthouses to report on arraignments, watching some of the unluckiest, choice-challenged people I’d ever seen in my life.

Along the way, my sense of humor took a dark turn.

I’d joke to other court reporters about whether someone standing in front of the judge was guilty of whatever they were charged with (“Of course they are!”). When listening to police-scanner chatter about fire trucks being sent to a triple-decker fire in Lawrence, some of us would place bets on how quickly they’d put out the flames. Lawrence burned so often that the firefighters learned to do their jobs with ninja-like precision.

My colleagues and I felt a lot of sadness and heartache along the way. Our hatred of human suffering was always just below the surface. But joking about some of it is how we survived.

This gallows humor is something a lot of police officers, medical professionals, security practitioners and military veterans have shared with me over the years based on their own experiences, most of them a lot more harrowing than anything I’ve experienced.

No matter how dangerous and tragic something is, sometimes laughter is the only armor you have.

I mention this because there’s been some backlash over memes and commentary making light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some say it’s cruel to laugh about such a grave threat, that we have to take it seriously. Some who joke about it are called dismissive.

And some of those people are dismissive. I shake my head more over people who seriously downplay what’s happening, writing it off as a media conspiracy to undermine Trump.

But those memes joking about toilet-paper hoarding? That Onion article about wearing two face masks (one on the back of the head in case Coronavirus attacks from behind)? Those are keeping me sane.

If the humor bothers you, I’m sorry. I certainly don’t want to see you hurting.

But don’t expect everyone to walk around their quarantine holes with a dour stare 24 hours a day.

To the jokesters: Keep it coming. You’re helping me through this, and I appreciate you.

March 15, 2020March 15, 2020

Researching COVID-19 When You Have Depression, Anxiety and OCD

One of my biggest OCD habits has always been a tendency to over-research things. In 2005-06, when some “experts” predicted an H5N1 bird flu pandemic that would kill as many or more people as Spanish Flu in 1918-19, I googled “bird flu” multiple times a day and would go five pages deep per search. You can find some terrifying shit in a search like that.

That period and the one we’re now living through has brought three things into focus for me:

No matter how experienced the scientist or medical professional, predictions are a roll of the dice. One expert you see on the news a lot lately is Michael Osterholm. He’s painting a bleak picture now and painted an even bleaker one during that bird flu cycle. Things didn’t turn out as he predicted.
Deep Googling will drive you mad. I love data. My profession requires that I sift through and make sense of a lot of it. But when you dive deep out of fear, looking for numbers and analysis that suggest everything will be fine, you will almost always be disappointed because of reason 1.
Getting news from social media will drive you even madder. Every article you find comes with all manner of opinions and predictions from your friends and family, most of whom have no medical expertise. They might know someone who is, and they think that magically makes them an expert.

As I’ve learned to manage my own depression, anxiety and OCD, I’ve refined my armchair research habits. These are not cure-alls by any means, but these are what I’m doing.

Avoiding the Google search barrel roll

Instead of typing in “COVID-19” in the news search and scrolling several pages of results, I’ve limited my search to finding specific data points that paint the current picture without the emotion of news commentary.

Using dashboards FTW

I bookmarked the best examples early on and now I just check those sites once or twice a day. I get a lot more information and have to do much less scrolling, and I get a calmer picture every time. The dashboards that are particularly helpful include the World-O-Meter Coronavirus page I mentioned in the last post and this excellent piece of work from a high school student.

Staying current with the CDC

The Centers for Disease Control website has a good FAQ section on COVID-19 — actionable guidance that focuses on what you can do in the here and now and not what might happen a week or a month from now.

Filtering social media

I could tell you to stay away from Facebook, Twitter, and the like, but that would make me a hypocrite. I’m on Facebook all the time. Yet I have learned to look at shared articles with more scrutiny. If it’s an article from Vice, Rolling Stone or Mother Jones, I’m less inclined to click the links; often their titles are laced with scaremongering and political bias from the left or right. If it’s from NPR or the BBC, I’m more inclined to go in and read or listen.

I’ve also gotten a good sense of who among my Facebook friends will react to news with cooler heads and who filter the news through political bias, overreact and or be too dismissive. I’m starting to conclude that it’s pointless to engage the latter camp in a reasoned discussion. Splitting hairs over whether COVID-19 is more deadly than the flu is worse than useless and you won’t change minds. The same when it comes to whether the Trump Administration has done a good or poor job managing the crisis. You won’t change emotionally charged, politically charged opinions. My mental health has been better since I decided to stop trying to do so. (I do go in and poke a little fun at these friends from time to time. Humor helps when the recipient takes it in the right spirit. Most do.)

Reading the big papers

In the past, I’ve been skeptical of the political biases within the big daily papers (the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post). But I must say that when it comes to COVID-19 reporting, all have done valuable service and are worth visiting once or twice a day.

The New York Times in particular has done a good job keeping the news simple and visual. Yes, I love these visuals. The Wall Street Journal has done a good job as well, especially with its special insert on managing the business fallout. Both have kept live updates concise as well. Even CNN has done that part well.

Parting thoughts

In this crisis, I’m heartened by a lot of the good things I see. I’ve been on two grocery runs this week where the stores were packed and shelves were empty. But I haven’t seen the fistfights and shouting matches others have reported. I’ve come across a lot of friendly folks who understand the absurdity of it all and are being friendly and helpful to each other.

I’m seeing a lot of businesses adapting almost seamlessly to all the closings and quarantines. The Canlis Restaurant in Seattle shut its dining room but switched gears to food delivery. My own company now has employees working from home until further notice, and we’ve switched a lot of our events from in-person to virtual with little hassle.

We are adapting. We are being good to each other. And that leaves me with hope that we may yet get through this in better shape than where we started.

March 14, 2020March 14, 2020

I Had Nothing Left to Say. Then Came COVID-19.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, deciding there was nothing left to say about life with OCD, depression and anxiety. I learned to live with it, accepted that ups and downs would be part of the journey (they have been) and saw others stepping up to share their challenges in powerful fashion.

So I departed, leaving the blog online for those who might get use from it. My work here was done.

The unprecedented anxiety and fear over COVID-19 has compelled me to return for two reasons:

Rationality is in short supply. People either crudely dismiss the dangers of a virus the world has never seen before or they go into full freak-out, predicting another Great Depression and millions upon millions of deaths. Those of us in the middle need to speak up.
I’ve haven’t curled up into a ball. I should be doing my part to be there for those who aren’t handling this as well.

I’m very concerned about the pandemic. Not about the virus itself, which so far appears mild for most who catch it, but about the economic chaos that comes with it — with everything getting cancelled, the stock market doing barrel rolls and the prospect of a health-care system overrun with panicked or seriously ill people.

But I don’t see an apocalypse. The economy, battered as it may be, isn’t fundamentally broken as it was during the financial meltdown of 2008, when credit froze and companies went under en mass. This is a forced slowdown as people make what I see as the right decisions, cancelling sporting events, business travel, conferences and everything in between.

The storm will pass, in large part because in our hour of danger, good people step up and help their family, friends and neighbors. We’re seeing plenty of that already.

That is, however, cold comfort to those who suffer from depression, anxiety and other instances of mental adversity.

If you thrive on activity and, for example, travel the world on business, the cancellation of well-laid plans will surely be a depressing thing. I’ve had to scrub two business trips planned for the next two months, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t phase me. A friend has had to cancel a lot more than I have and admitted that a wave of depression was one result.

With so much of life on hold and COVID-19 being pretty much all you see on the news, people with anxiety are undoubtedly suffering through bouts of mental whiplash. The space inside their skulls is filled with the sound of sirens and the sight of red strobe lights whirling away. In the past I’ve described this anxiety as level red, one of five colors in the anxiety rainbow.

I’m relieved to say that my own anxiety level, which would certainly have been at red a few years ago, is much lower right now. I’d say it’s at yellow: The concern and worry are there, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by them. I’m still able to live my life and do my work. For me, that’s progress. It also makes me feel a bigger sense of responsibility to help calm the waters, and I’ll do that in upcoming posts.

I’ve also seen glimpses of light cutting through the fog.

While the negative, emotion-laden media coverage is certainly loud, I’m finding plenty of common sense guidance. Some examples:

Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are successfully managing COVID-19 without some of the draconian measures China took. It shows a potential path the rest of the world could take.
There are some great data visualizations available to put things in perspective. One of my favorites, the World-O-Meter Coronavirus page, because it presents data points clearly, calmly, and without the freak-out factor.
A lot of people are finding humor in all this. I’m sharing a lot of memes on my Facebook page because I’m a firm believer that humor is one of our most powerful weapons against the darkness. A couple of favorites:

Two final thoughts:

A lot of kids are scared right now, and some parents will find it hard to explain what’s going on. In times like this I always think of what Mister Rogers once said: Tell them to watch for the helpers. They always show up.

For those wondering what they can do right now: Just be the blessing in someone else’s life. You don’t have to do something big to make a difference. Help those around you where they need help. Help them smile. Help them find the good news in a sea of bad news.

Until next time, be well.

November 9, 2017November 9, 2017

Robert C. Corthell, 1948-2017: Trucker, Teacher, Family Man

Robert C. Corthell of Haverhill, Mass., died peacefully at Lahey Burlington Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, surrounded by loved ones, after suffering a pulmonary embolism. He was 69. He fought his brief illness with the same stubbornness and grit by which he lived.

His family and friends knew him as Bob, Bobby, Dad and Grandpa.

He was born and raised in Haverhill and, after serving in the U.S. Army, spent the rest of his life there, though in more recent years he and Sharon spent their winters in Winterhaven, Florida.

He made his living as a truck driver, hauling tractor trailers, commuter and school buses and just about anything else with four wheels and a motor. He was proud of his profession, keeping model cars and trucks around his desk at home. He retired from Conway Freight in 2014.

His nephew, Chris, remembers coming back from Germany in 1981 and riding with him while he drove a commuter bus to Boston.

He was a family man first, always there to help bail someone out if they were stuck on the side of the road or facing other crises. He and Sharon took in family and others in times of need. He was a devoted member of All Saints Parish in Haverhill and sent his daughters to St. Joseph School, then part of the parish. There, he served as a Sunday school teacher and Eucharistic minister.

Above all, he was a teacher.

On the side, Bob and Sharon ran Chandler’s Auto School and, as his niece, Faith, remembers, taught virtually half of Haverhill to drive.

After his brother-in-law, Leon Basiliere, suffered a stroke, Bob taught him how to drive again and helped him get his license back.

He taught just about all of his kids, nieces and nephews to drive and had started teaching his grandson, Sean. At Conway, he taught fellow employees about truck-driving safety. After retirement, he continued to teach driving and safety at the New England Tractor Trailer Training School (NETTTS) in North Andover, Mass.

He taught his son-in-law, Bill, how to drive with a stick shift in a beaten-up Ford Escort up one of the steepest hills in town. Bill was nervous as hell, and thinks his father-in-law enjoyed that.

He was passionate about RV camping and the safe and proper use of firearms. He and Sharon took their camper out regularly, and they lived in one during their Florida winters. Those passions rubbed off on his children and grandchildren, and each summer they would all camp together.

He taught his daughter, Erin, and son-in-law, Bill, how to haul a camper, set it up, close it down and maintain it. He also taught most of his children, his oldest grandson and various friends how to shoot with a firearm.

He and Sharon were avid square dancers and were members of the Firesiders, Montachusett Twirlers and Wolf Rockers square dancing clubs.

He had opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them, especially when it came to politics.

He taught countless people how to live and love. For that, we’re forever grateful.

He is survived by Sharon, his cherished wife of 48 years, his children, Erin Brenner and her husband, Bill; Robin Coughlin and her husband, Tim; Sara Croft; and Amanda Daniels and her husband, Matt, all of Haverhill. He also leaves behind his grandchildren, Sean, Duncan, Madison and Owen, many nieces and nephews, and his siblings: Cindi Basiliere, Janet Gillis, Natalie Pineau and her husband, Steve; Steve Corthell and his wife, Pat; and Fred Corthell and his wife, Terry. Bob was preceded in death by his sister, Nancy.

CALLING HOURS will be Sunday from 2-5 p.m. at Driscoll Funeral Home, 309 S Main St, Haverhill, MA 01835. A funeral Mass will be held Monday, 10 a.m. at All Saints Parish, 120 Bellevue Ave, Haverhill, MA 01832, followed by burial at St. Joseph Cemetery, 892 Hilldale Ave, Haverhill, MA 01832.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in memory of (name of tributee) to support the greatest needs in patient care. Please send your gift to: Philanthropy Office, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, 41 Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01805. You also may donate at Giving.LaheyHealth.org/Donate.

April 3, 2017

I Was Lost But Now I’m Found

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

There are plenty of reasons I haven’t written in this blog in a long time. The easy reasons are that my career has been busy and I’ve been managing a family building on the side. I also decided awhile back that I shouldn’t write unless I had something to say. To be honest, I just didn’t feel like opening up like I used to.

But lately my willingness has returned.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Uia2EzrZMTE

The last year has included some of the best and worst times of my life. My wife and kids continue to make me proud with all they do, and I absolutely adore my still-new job. Though I never wanted responsibility for the family real estate, I found ways to make the best of it, and I’ve certainly learned a lot. I’ve also always been a sucker for trying to fix things that are broken, and in that building I found no greater challenge.

But somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

I started trying to be my father and do things the way I thought he would have. For a while, I was paying more attention to that than my real job. Sometimes I had no choice, because the property has a huge environmental cleanup attached to it.

My mental and physical health deteriorated. The frequency of migraines shot up, I gained weight and started slipping into my habit of being a people pleaser.

I grew obsessed with saving my father’s dream of selling the building and leaving his kids a financial cushion. I desperately tried to make everyone proud, especially my sisters, who co-own the building with me.

As I worked to put the property back on its feet and rent out the spaces, I found myself trying to put my trust in the various contractors who came along, when I should have been eyeing everyone skeptically and asking tougher questions. When a property needs work, it’s stunning how the sharks smell blood and start circling.

By year’s end, I was bitter and resentful, angry with my father for dumping this mess on me. I resented being left on my own without the necessary business experience. Most importantly, I started to realize I wasn’t being myself.

In mid-2016, I left one job to go to another. The role turned out to be different from what was discussed early on. I found myself with little to do, so I took that as a reason to focus on the building even more.

That didn’t last long, because I’ve never been one to phone it in with work, and the fact that I was doing so was eating at me.

Then I found another job, and in the process found I myself again — remembering what I did for a living and why I was on this planet. The person I was began fighting the person I had become.

As I fell back in love with my real work, my resentment of the family responsibility grew. Some questioned how I was doing things, which made me angrier, since I felt everyone was happy to leave it all on me in the beginning. I started to get sicker.

At the bottom of that pit, things started getting clear again.

I remembered some important things:

My first responsibility is to God, and, by extension, my immediate family — specifically my wife and children.
My life’s work is in information security, not real estate.

A few months ago I took all my confusion into the confession booth. The priest suggested I practice prudence — using reason to govern myself. In my case, prudence meant putting the added responsibilities in their proper place, behind the things that are more important.

That’s what I’ve been doing.

I asked my sisters to start taking on some of the building responsibilities, which they have. I began limiting the days at the family building to once a week and spending most of the time each week at my company’s office. It’s made things better.

There’s still a lot of turmoil right now. I can’t fully escape the building. I still have to do better at doing right by my family. But my life has come into clearer focus, and I’m grateful for that.

The time for people pleasing is over. If my father is watching, I hope he understands that I can’t be him and that I never should have tried.

Some will be taken aback by the choices I make going forward, but they’ll have to deal with it. If something doesn’t fit into my top priorities, I won’t spend any more time on it than I have to.

If that makes them angry, so be it. It’s time I got back to being me.

March 24, 2017July 16, 2020

Thought I Was a Security Rockstar. Was Just Stupid

In pretty much every industry of late, people of great talent, drive and achievement are being labeled rock stars. I certainly see it as I work in the information security industry.

Those who get the label tend to deserve it. But there’s a dangerous side-effect: The term rock star can bloat the egos of those it’s bestowed upon. It leads to big heads and bad attitudes. I’ve watched many handle it with humble grace. And I’ve watched a few fall into the trap.

Exhibit A: me.

Mood music:

As a security journalist who posted new content almost daily, I got a lot of praise and, yes, some called me a rock star. This snowballed when I started The OCD Diaries.

I found myself on more than one “security influencers to follow” list. People kept praising me for my supposed raw honesty. So I did what any good addict does: I drank it up, tied all my self worth into it and started to believe it all.

Don’t get me wrong. I think I’ve accomplished a lot of good stuff, and I’ve certainly been lucky in my career. But a rock star? Looking back on it now, I don’t think so.

I believed it when people told me, though. My head grew larger, while my brain went stale. I stopped trying. I truly believed I could pull off anything with little effort.

Of course, the real world doesn’t work that way.

I eventually found myself growing snobby, moldy and stagnant. Somewhere along the way as I bought into my own hype, I started to fail.

I lapsed into old habits. I began dialing in my work. The praise became chains, weighing me down like Scrooge’s old business partner in A Christmas Carol.

Sometime last fall, I went from being a rock star to the office jerk. It left me off balance and in a depression that deepened over the winter. I started to worry about being found out as an impostor. Worse, I found myself losing my usefulness.

Since then, I’ve been working hard to return to my roots. I feel like I’m starting to make real progress, but I still have a ways to go.

As for those in my industry who remain honest and humble, I aspire to be more like them. And I don’t fault those who are kind enough to put the rock star mantle on others. I simply see as lessons for all of us:

Never stop working your asses off.
Never stop seeking truth.
Don’t be like me — not too much, anyway.

November 18, 2016

Depression and Anxiety in the Age of Trump

This post isn’t to endorse or condemn either of this year’s presidential candidates. It IS acknowledgement that people are shaken by the election of Donald Trump as president. For many, the uncertainty and fear translates into depression and anxiety.

If Hillary Clinton had won, there’d be a lot of Trump supporters suffering in similar fashion. So I would have been writing this post anyway.

The big question is how to move forward if the election has left you in a state of darkness. What follows are my suggestions. They are not scientific and I’m certainly no doctor. It is simply based on what I’ve learned in my own journey through the darkness and light.

Mood music:

For me, the fate of the world used to seem to hang on the next election.

In 1994, I was a lot more liberal than I am today. (I’ve gone from slightly left of center to dead center politically over time.) That year, the GOP swept both chambers of Congress and I was devastated. Two years before that, when Bill Clinton was elected president, I thought all would be right with the world. A lot of people had the same emotional jolt eight years ago when Obama was elected, while folks on the other side of the spectrum were as depressed in 2008 as those now dismayed by Trump’s rise.

As I got older and did a lot of work to manage my demons, I found that my personal happiness wasn’t tied to which way the political winds blow. What says it all are the lyrics from the Avett Brothers song I started this post with:

When nothing is owed, deserved or expected
And you’re life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If your loved by someone you’re never rejected.
Decide what to be and go be it.

My life has taken turns for the better and worse regardless of who is in office. Government can’t change me. Only I can.

But that’s where my journey has taken me. It would be unfair and unrealistic to ask people in the throes of election-induced depression to simply flip a switch and approach it like me. So I’m going to point out a few things that might make you feel better in the short term. Some of it is serious, and some of it not so much.

His time is limited. People looking at the next four years with a sense of doom should remember that there’s a mid-term congressional election in two years. Given how divided the electorate is, it wouldn’t take much for a wave of voter discontent to change the balance of power in Congress. That happened to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama early in their presidencies, and it happened to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan halfway through their second terms. The voters have a habit of balancing the scales when Washington goes too far in the wrong direction.
A burning forest gives way to new life. It’s been said that a lot of people were willing to vote for Trump despite his racist, sexist comments because they saw him as a Molotov cocktail they could throw at a capitol rife with corruption. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have failed the American people badly these last 15-plus years. Trump doesn’t have many friends among them and that could have a burning effect on the establishment that forces both parties to change their ways.
He may not be so bad. If you look at his history, Trump has put women in high positions. He relies heavily on the counsel of a son-in-law who is devout in his Jewish faith, and he has said that same-sex marriage rights are settled law. He’s also backtracked on his talk about killing Obamacare, instead talking more about reforming it than replacing it. The healthcare law is certainly in need of fixing. Maybe he’ll turn out to be pretty middle-of-the-road, and the worst-case scenarios won’t materialize. All that could be wishful thinking on my part, but one never knows.
New Star Wars films are coming. No matter how bad things may get, Disney has ensured that we’ll have a new Star Wars movie for each of the next four years. Star Wars always makes things better.

Whatever happens, we need to take care of ourselves. If you are prone to depression and anxiety, seek out your friends and family. Talk to someone. I’m always happy to lend an ear. If you have a therapist, keep your appointments. If you think you might need medication, talk to your doctors.

All this may seem like the obvious, but we need constant reminders — especially when we’re down.

As long as we work to be the best individuals we can be, and as long as we keep the things beyond our control in perspective, we will survive and even prosper.