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If you have time to worry, you have time to work. [1]

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Date: 2024-07-02  

The news over the past few days has been enough to rattle anyone’s confidence. I get it; I woke up from a dream this morning, less than five hours after I’d gone to sleep, where someone with an AR15 or something like it was threatening to shoot my cats. So I cuddled back up with one of them and managed to fall back asleep. If I had instead spent time worrying about what the dream meant, I would have been absolutely wrecked and not good for much of anything today.

I titled this “if you have time to worry, you have time to work”, but it’s not because I’m trying to say people shouldn’t worry. Worry is one of those things we do almost automatically; trying to stop ourselves from worrying just makes us worry more. But worrying is a mental activity, not a physical one. There’s nothing stopping you from doing something physical at the same time

And it’s the strangest thing, but physically doing something, especially if it’s constructive, often helps ease the worries too. That’s because worrying builds up nervous energy, and unless you do something with that energy, it just sits there and builds up, which tends to make us more nervous and jumpy. I’ve found this to be true any number of times; I’d feel bad or upset about something, and then I’d go for a run, or even a walk, or I’d do some cleaning, or something else along those lines. And I’d find that I felt better, simply because I gave myself an outlet for the energy worrying produced.

Now imagine taking the worry over recent events and putting it into GOTV efforts, even if it’s something simple like writing letters encouraging people to vote come November. If even mindless activities like exercise or cleaning can help ease worries, imagine how much more so taking action that will help counter the worries (even if only a little) will feel?

In the end, our focus has to be on things we can actually do. We cannot directly affect Biden or the SCOTUS, or Republican shenanigans in the courts or Congress, even though I dearly wish we could. But there are things we can do to affect the outcome, and isn’t that ultimately what elections are all about? A bunch of people, just like us, coming together for a common purpose that is greater than any of us can hope to achieve alone.

So let’s get things done.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/2/2250666/-If-you-have-time-to-worry-you-have-time-to-work?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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