Dateline 9-30-2016

I don't know why it took me this long to figure out why I've been feeling down lately, but again, that's the fun of having a sneaky disorder like depression. For the past month or two, I've made an active attempt to avoid doom and gloom based entertainment. This mainly means that I've been avoiding the news and minimalize how much I follow this year's election. 

I've actually been doing really well at keeping up this attempt to ease my anxieties about the state of the world until I relapsed and gave in to watching the first presidential debate. Now I wouldn't say this mundane battle of nitwits, where we learned absolutely nothing new about our new leader to be, triggered this latest bout of dread but it was the jump off point that opened the floodgates of online news that reinforced my fears that there is no winning no matter who ends up getting the job to steer this country into the ground.

As a third party voter, I feel like I am being gaslamped by both sides of this two party power structure as everyone that screams for change during non-presidential election years fall in line with the arrogance of the people they spend most of their time complaining about. This is happening on both sides as everyone sticks to their guns as well as the story they sell of false choice.

What's bumming me out more than the shitty options that we've been given is that the third party voter seems to be getting the bulk of the hatred being spewed. As an atheist who started to question theology very early on, I've spent most of my life hearing dumb arguments against thinking on your own. The biggest misconception being atheism equals Satanism, which never made sense to me because a lack of belief is a lack of belief so Satan doesn't exist in my world either.

This is the same way that I feel about the argument that, a third party vote is a vote for Trump, which is far from true because if it wasn't for the third and fourth party, I wouldn't be voting at all because I'm so against both of these monsters. I don't think my third party candidate is going to win but I'm not going to let that be due to my lack of effort. I kind of see it similar to how someone might vote against a war even though they are in a room full of war mongers that are not hiding their support.

The day after the debate I finally discovered The Jimmy Dore Show. He's a comedian I've like for a while but never listened to his show. At first, I felt a great relief because I finally found someone that shares my opinion and has a way of delivery his insights that is rational while being entertaining as well. 

I spent the rest of the week watching his clips and though I love what I'm seeing, it has sent me back down the rabbit hole of doom and gloom. Hopefully, now that I'm caught up on the show, I'll be able to check in from time to time instead of spending every free minute following this garbage that we call news.

Luckily, I'm going to be started my next app building lesson today so that should keep my mind off the world. I can't wait to get to my next assignment because that seems to be my happy place these days.

Talk to you tomorrow,

- The Wicker Breaker