Insane to Live in DC Right Now and Yet I’m Very Happy

There are so many unbelievable, deeply disturbing, and utterly absurd things happening at a breakneck speed in Washington DC that it’s really hard to not become numb to them. Terrible, unAmerican proposals like cutting healthcare and food assistance for poor people and demanding they suddenly pay back student loans all to make billionaires to be even more billionary. Not to mention all the political stunts. Like, please let’s not mention them because they are meant to be a distraction.

I have no right to be this happy. Where is all the dread I should feel about what is the next Democracy-eroding policy these evil idiots will propose? Where is the anxiety I should feel about not making the money I need to live in this town? But if this season is bringing me pleasure and contentment and a feeling that things are coming together, then I best just avert my eyes from the mouth of the gifthorse. Last Thanksgiving, I thought a lot about a line from a song that says “If you want a garden, you’re going to have to sow the seeds.” I just have a feeling the seeds I’ve planted are about to burst forth.

Last month I wrote about how much anxiety I was feeling in the midst of learning the lesson that Progress Isn’t Linear and that discomfort is growth. One day, my eye stopped twitching and I could once again drink the morning cup of coffee I continued to make each day for the sake of ritual. But then I started to worry about why I wasn’t feeling anxiety any more. After all, wasn’t it worry that had propelled me to created a LinkedIn profile and participate in the real timesuck useless exercise of sending tailored resumes into the void? Then I decided no, playing the worst case scenario game is actually not a useful exercise just as worrying about money doesn’t make you money. And voila, the month of May unfolded just how spring does – slowly, then quickly, the blossoming an expected yet surprising delight.

I turned 41 this May and celebrated by hosting a cocktail party for myself. My best friend Lauren in Denver surprised me by flying in the day before the party, showing up in my apartment lobby with a mylar Happy Birthday balloon that hasn’t lost an ounce of helium in the weeks since. Together we prepped for the party and suddenly there were a few dozen friends, old and new, in my dream apartment and they sang to me in all the languages they knew, which was seven, and that felt like a testament that the international life I’d cultivated whilst living abroad could absolutely continue here in DC, which is, after all, an international city. I went out after the party to my favorite neighborhood bar and came home at 2:30am to a clean apartment because Lauren, bless her, had done all the dishes.

In May I put out feelers for jobs that – unlike those useless LinkedIn applications – might actually lead somewhere. I sort of stopped thinking in terms of landing one six-figure job with benefits as a means to fund the life I want to have and instead thought what if I could piece together a handful of income-generating gigs that align more with my interests? I’m exploring serving and bartending jobs at establishments I vibe with. I went to a big interior design trade show in April and rethought how I structure my interior design services and am moving away from making mere “hobby money” with my business and currently have a few clients in the hopper. And I’m finally going to try and monetize my writing. This means finding an agent for the memoir I wrote in based on the one year after my husband left me. This also means launching an in-person writing salon in my DC apartment that I’m calling “Writing Through Uncertain Times“.

And after 13 years of maintaining this here free blog, I’m going to start a Substack and ask my readers, like you, to support my work there for $8 a month. I’ll start with bi-monthly posts that will be a lot like this one, but may go in some new directions too. More information on this soon, but you can go ahead and subscribe here and I would feel most supported, thank you.

It feels like a time to hustle and I’m actually excited about the hustle. Ready and willing to do it, to see where the process of making a living by creating my own opportunities leads and being open to new opportunities I haven’t even yet considered.

This coming week, DC will host the World Pride celebration and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be wearing something skimpy and colorful and screaming my support for the right to be who you are at the big pride parade that will run through the streets of DC. It will be a counterprotest to the Trump administration revoking HIV funding and enacting anti-trans policies and to the dumb birthday military parade/very very expensive ego stroke Trump will hold a week later.

In the midst of so much destruction, of an undeniable time of struggle across the nation but especially in DC, it can feel wrong to be so enthusiastic about the good things and the new things that are unfolding. But it’s the only way.