Quite often now a days it gets really hard to keep the drive up to be happy go lucky, it has been my modus operandi for years, I’m that slightly aloof coworker who gets overly amused by his own bad jokes, the guy who comes up with punny names for tools, basically the class clown, just grown up a little. Outwardly that’s still my role, and I’m still doing my best, not only for the people around me, but for myself, because I like it when people smile, I don’t really care if rather often I become the butt of the joke, that’s something that is easy to take to keep the mood up.

Now as the climate crisis becomes more and more appearant, there is a war in europe, israel is continuing it’s genocide of the palestinians, and the fascists in America just keeps on clawing in more and more of the power, I feel like more often than not I get zapped, and I have to grab deeper and deeper into my reserve of spoons to keep up my happy façade.

The thing is I do my best to reduce what I can when it comes to my living, I don’t have a car, I try to buy locally when I can, and I just don’t buy much when I can awade it. I’m open to other people’s viewpoints, and do my best to not be a dick about things that people can’t change. It’s something that I had to work on for a while, since I was a 90’s kid, but with time I was also dragged along, and made to see that no matter how different people look on the outside, we aren’t that different in the end.

We get bombarded all the time, with americans in social media talking about their situation, and as much as I feel with them, it’s far away, and I have zero way to really do anything. It’s oligarchs and fascists, and capitalism run wild, and no matter how little I can do I keep on hearing about more and more shit happening, the same is about other things, the crazies in charge not only are set on destroying as much of our culture and togetherness with capitalism’s continuous greed for more and more shiny baubles rather than personal connections, and are ready to sacrifice so much just for the opportunity to get more of them.

Since I keep on hearing about these things of course I want to do something, and I do, I change, I change my life, while it makes only a small difference to the trans person that I was talking with on the net that was sharing frustrations to me, at least I am better equipped to deal with someone I meet in real life, and can be a better person, but for the big things, it just keeps on getting worse, and you just see more and more horrible things happen, and the small power you have to push through demonstrations and grassroots efforts just is so small.

This huge power difference makes me feel like none of the efforts are worth anything, and I will keep on being berated by people who knows nothing about me anyway, I keep on working a full-time job fulfilling the goals of the bosses rather than my own, and see little return for effort made, even though at times it was hard fought battles. It would just be a difference to really have a stake in something rather than fighting other people’s battles.

So you stand there getting more and more frustrated about seeing the unfairness and outright evil shit happening, and you’re taking some extra time off to walk over to the blood drive to donate blood. You try to keep up your belief that anything you do actually matters, and while locally it might actually do, that donation that you made might save a life, or at least make someone else’s a little less miserable, but you don’t see anything you do make a difference.

The apathy rears its ugly head, you see that your keeping away from polluting, or being a decent guy just gets nullified at once by oligarcs going on their 7th vacation of the year, or your try to talk that one friend that don’t see any issues with the genocide in Gaza, which quickly gets wiped out since their only thoughts are those of the last person they talked to, and it feels like nothing you do really matters. No matter what you do, it makes no difference in the end, and keeping it up just gets harder and harder. No matter what you keep on getting bombarded with the next horrible thing happening and the light points just gets fewer and farther between, the time where you’re trying to recover a spoon or two gets coopted again by the oligarcs and the fascists, because it’s all people talk about.

Well, I just talked with my boss again today, since I saw there is a blood drive nearby again, I will walk over on friday and donate blood again, because I’m apathetic, but I still want to do something good, to balance out at least a little part of everything, make small changes, to at least try and make the world better than if I wasn’t.