I think I’m having a bit of an autistic burnout moment over politics. I’m moving a lot more left over the years but just don’t feel like I can do anything. I have 2 years left on a work contract and it would be killer to lose that job, but also I want to help people in ways where quitting might be the best option. I want to learn about politics and history more, but I also don’t want to stress about it because I don’t feel like it changes things that much. Id like a community that talks about these feelings and I feel like this should be that community for me. Let’s just chat about it.
Exactly this. As an anarchist, I’m all about small communities and local involvement. Look for the ways in which you can meaningfully contribute something. Even something as simple as a conversation with a single person to help educate them in a skill you have - that’s an actual, tangible good you did for the world. The more you plug yourself in, and look for opportunities to give back, the more you’ll find yourself involved and affecting change.
For example, a few years back my employer decided to launch a bunch of employee resource groups (ERGs). Of the list of ERGs, I saw that they were making both a pride (lgbtq+) and an emerging professionals ERG, so I signed up to be a leader of both. Once we formed, I started interfacing right away on the things that I had personal grievances with - issues like the policy having non-inclusive language or needing improvement, opportunity to expand healthcare to be more lgbtq+ friendly and cover more health conditions, opportunity to expand fertility, legal, adoption, mental health and other available services, improving mentorship opportunities, improving employee education, etc. Many of these I had no idea how to do or what to do, so I solicited feedback, got into meetings with people in charge of these aspects, and in general just voiced my opinion. Along the way I was able to expand our transgender healthcare offerings, rewrote a bunch of policy, launched a gigantic t-shirt design contest for pride (20k+ t-shirts each year), expanded fertility/adoption policy, started work on mentorship, hosted a bunch of educational talks (including talking in some of them), set up a number of social groups for people to interface with each other, started talks on degendering bathrooms, and a bunch more. Very little of what I was able to accomplish in this scope was planned at the beginning and I owe most of it to simply deciding I wanted to make the world better and trying to get involved/engaged.
I’ve also been very burnt out lately and at a loss of how I can combat the alt right infiltration of everything local. This comment might be one of the most inspiring things I’ve read in a long time, thank you for sharing.