ADULTING FOR ADULTS
Go Save Yourself
There’s No Cavalry. There Never Was.
I don’t care what the CDC says. I don’t care what WHO says. I don’t care what doctors say, or what scientists say, or what crazy people say.
We’re all on our own.
You should believe me; nearly all my predictions have come true:
✔️ From the beginning, in March of 2020 — when the shockingly wrong CDC was telling us not to mask up, and before it all got political — I argued for masking.
⭕ I also predicted vaccines — though I never predicted ascience.
✔️ I argued for better hygiene instead of panic hoarding.
✔️ I argued for non-hostile social distancing.
✔️ Remember the summer before the chaotic 2020 school year? I argued for homeschooling.
❌ Long before there was a vaccine on the horizon, I wrote my kids a farewell note. (And even with a vaccine, it might still come in handy. Those sneaky mutations won’t always get milder.)
A Bold New Initiative
And now I’m arguing for a new mindset: The government won’t save you. Neither will capitalism, or socialism, or the church, or Elon Musk. There are exactly zero politicians willing to fight for you. People armed with guns or fairy dust won’t fight for you. Hell, your own family won’t even mask up for you.
You are really, truly, completely on your own when it comes to your personal safety, and the safety of your kids.
So I hereby invite you to join me on a new initiative: Do-It-Yourself Public Safety. And if you don’t join me, I don’t care. I don’t need you. Because: We’re All On Our Own!
Here’s how it looks, with lots of illustrations:
- 🛍️ Make like a survivalist. Without panicking, just buy more canned food, more seeds, more TP. Every single shopping trip, buy half a shopping bag more than you need for the week. Not a 🛒. A shopping bag. Because good people neither initiate nor contribute to panics.
- 🥕 Plant a garden. Whether you’ve got 40 acres of dirt or 40 inches of window sill, plant things. Get seeds into soil. If you’re really civic-minded, play Johnny Appleseed and plant something permanent 🍏 in abandoned soil in any bare place you find. But don’t expect other people to provide you with food. There’s a fair chance they can’t.
- 📜 Skill up. Get educated, get experienced, take courses, teach yourself whatever it takes to do something other people are willing to pay for. Because your employer won’t save you. In the end, we’re all in business for ourselves.
- 👨🏫 Teach your kids. Whether you’re blessed to stay home for work or childcare, or have to send your kids to daycare — er, school — while you work, their education is on you. Read to them and with them, quiz them, teach them to cook and can and sew and handle money. The task of childhood isn’t overscheduled ballet lessons, piano lessons, and soccer teams. It’s learning to become a functioning, healthy, stable grownup who can thrive in relationships. Adult life skills. They’re all that matter.
- 😷 Don’t be stupid. Wear a mask whether other people do or do not. Minimize your exposure to idiots and strangers. Stay on top of all your vaccines, not just the Covid ones. Refuse to attend a party of 🤡s, to back down when Spreaders demand that you remove your mask, or to stop being afraid. Be proudly afraid. Proclaim it from the rooftops: “Yep, I’m absolutely afraid. Covid kills braincells. Covid causes diabetes. Covid randomly murders people. Covid is a monster, and damned straight I’m afraid. Don’t you read?”
- 🎎 Make pods. Socialize with people who are committed to not being stupid. Build stronger relationships with them. Include people in your pod who don’t share your politics or your religion or your age, but only if they do share your good sense. And don’t make your pod-ness a secret: “I will happily hang out with you when your vaccines are up to date and you’re willing to mask. Will six weeks be enough time to get you there?”
- 🔨 Create. Make content, make art, make casseroles to drop off to the neighbors, make yourself stronger. Build a fish tank, a bookshelf, a planting box. Sew, dance, learn, hike, pray, journal, meditate. Be a positive influence on yourself, other people in your pod, and the world outside your pod. Life will go on if you make it go on.
- 📰 Stop reading the news. Just stop. There’s nothing there that will make you happier, safer, smarter, or kinder. If there’s anything you need to know, you’ll get an alert on your cell phone. Everything else? It’s not important and will, literally, make you sicker. When you get your ballot in the mail, allocate just one hour to researching candidates and issues, then vote and be done. That’s it. That’s all the news you ever need.
- 🙏 Build your spiritual life. Church-goer or stay-homer, your life is better if you have a strong connection with Deity — whatever that means to you. Prayer and meditation and centering improve mental health, personal happiness, relationship satisfaction, athletic performance, and physical health⚕️. Science can observe it, even if it cannot explain it. There’s no downside to looking up.
- 💰 Save, save, save. The statistical odds are that you — a smart person — will live to a ripe old age. And you can choose now to live well then. You cannot, must not, expect magical fairies or fool’s gold ✨₿✨ to pay your rent when you’re old. You’re on your own. Put actual money into actual investments, even if you have to live on beans and rice to get there. (And yes, it’s worth it. Speaking as someone who lives debt free* in a castle in France after having raised seven kids to adulthood: Totally worth every bit of thrift-store shopping, at-home eating, junker-car driving, side hustling, long-hour working, DIY home repairing, and stay-cationing…because ambling around the grounds of this old French 🏰without a care in the world is pure, unadulterated joy.)
*️⃣ Though neither my husband nor I received a penny of parental aid after the age of 16 and paid our own ways through school, we did inherit some of our wealth. All told, we were bequeathed 73 dollars from my mother-in-law, and 290 dollars from my grandmother. We invested it in a couple of Ikea beds that went to a thrift store when the kids grew up.