11 february 2020
I'm nearing the light at the end of the tunnel. This is my last semester & gods willing I will have my bachelor's degree by the end of May. I've even signed a job offer; I'm supposed to fly to the city where company headquarters are located the day after the commencement ceremony so I can attend an orientation; hardly sooner than I had signed the documents somebody booked the flights & hotel room. I feel like I have somehow conned my way into a ticket out of financial precarity & dependence.
The return of U.S. general election season has brought time into focus in an unsettling way; my first child was born in early 2016, & I returned to university classes in early 2017 after having dropped out entirely for four years, not to mention the personal developments of other folks at home, so I've had the feeling that so much has been happening in my life that I don't have the time to actually experience any of it. The lives of others are even further beyond my grasp. I care about them & am moved by them but I can view them only in glimpses.
I remember following the beginnings of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign before he declared. I was in a very precarious retail job, struggling to maintain a car that could get me to that job & pay the utility bills even after relying on my relatives to help out with rent, & I felt like for once there was actually someone willing to talk about reality on a national stage. I said in 2016 that there would never be another moment quite like the campaign Bernie ran that year, even if he ran again in 2020. I was right, but not in the way that I expected. The Bernie 2020 campaign has been better, with a broader coalition & more momentum.
All throughout 2016 I watched the resurgent growth of ethnonationalism with horror. Brexit, Rodrigo Duterte, Richard Spencer. But since then time has so outstripped me that it feels like I have been watching the last four years' news on fast-forward.