Staying Sane in an Insane World

If you’ve followed me for a while, you may have noticed that I haven’t been around much. 

There’s been…a lot happening? In my personal life and my work life and my, I dunno, soul maybe? 

Obviously, that’s when one should be writing the most, when there are things to write and process and important life happenings to dissect and record. And yet, I have not been writing. I’ve thought about it every Friday: another week, another missed blog post. I don’t have a good reason; I just haven’t been doing it. 

But recently, someone important to me observed that I haven’t been writing, and I started thinking about what I have been doing instead, and how I’ve been spending my time. 

And then, this week, in the midst of a wild news cycle amongst a year (maybe five years) of wild news cycles, a friend asked me this:

“How do we keep up with the world but also protect ourselves from all this insanity?” 

And I’m gonna be honest, I wanted to just send a melting emoji and say, “Ugh, I dunno, man. It’s rough out here.”

But I forced myself, on a Wednesday afternoon, to stop and actually think about the answer. 

I typed up a wordy (and a little stale) response and sent it back, hoping my friend wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. But I’ve been thinking about it since then, about how we live sanely in an insane world without giving up hope or never trying to change things. 

I came up with three things:

1. Take breaks. I know this may be dumb, but sometimes we need to remember that we can stop for a minute. Whether it’s an evening of turning your phone off, a month without social media, one family dinner where no politics are allowed, or just three minutes to listen to your favorite song, don’t forget that it’s okay to pause. You’ll come back with more to give. 
2. Focus on what’s most important. Some days, that means making sure you eat and brush your teeth. Other days, that means getting up early to vote or helping a neighbor with a yard project. The trouble is that focusing on the important things means letting the less important things go, and that can take an enormous amount of energy. But if we stick with it, in the end, we can look back on our lives and see that we fought for what mattered, not for what shouted the loudest.
3. Find the beauty in the little things. There’s still so much joy and peace and beauty to be found in the world around us. Laughing at a sitcom or talking to a friend may feel ridiculous when the world is burning, but it reminds me why I’m keeping on, why I even care if the world burns. Make that fresh cup of coffee, pick up flowers from the grocery store, watch the sunset. Soak in the good that is there in the world. 

That’s all I’ve got. Three pretty basic things that you might be doing already. 

But as I look over those simple ideas, I realize that two of those are what I’ve been doing this year when I wasn’t writing. I was taking a break and spending time finding the beauty in the world. I was playing pickleball, going for walks, going on late-night ice cream runs, and getting through my day-to-day life the best I could. 

But now, after a break, it’s time to focus on what’s important again. Writing and creating are important to me. So it’s time to go back to that. I don’t know that I’ll be here every week, but I’m going to be writing. 

What about you? What do you do to stay sane in an insane world?