From Woke to Wook and Back Again

why I left politics, what I explored instead, and what calls me now

Welcome to my third ever Substack post. My last one was partially about my desire to slow down, and I’m embarrassed to say that right before I started writing this, I spent an hour zooming through a giant pile of emails from the week at lightning speed in an attempt to absorb as much news and reflection from other Substack writers as quickly as I could. My eyes feel dizzy from whipping across the screen so fast.

So I’m taking a moment to re-ground in slowness. Breathing slow, breathing deep.

S i g h.

The first time Trump took office, I left the world of nonprofit electoral organizing to search for deeper roots to our political crisis than “not enough people are voting / they’re not voting the right way”. I gave up my steady paycheck and handed in my campaign database system passwords, donated my pencil skirts and left it to other people to figure out the most compelling and relevant language for “resistance work” foundation grants.

I left and went to Southeast Asia and learned how to meditate and had my first ego-death in the Pai jungle. I learned how to live in my whole body and heart, instead of just my mind. I started dancing a lot, singing a lot, singing and dancing with my friends a lot. Camping, climbing on rocks. Uncovering my repressed trauma and healing through creative expression. Re-learning how to cry. Discovering the joys of long hugs and friendships that feel more like family.

I learned what liberation feels like in my body. I learned how to be powerfully, loudly, wildly myself in a society that wants us to be mindless cogs in the machine. And I did it on less than $20k a year.

For a while, I was just exploring in that way, prioritizing joy and aliveness and expanding the range of feelings I could feel. And then I started hearing the call to invest more deeply in my artistic gifts and believe in their worth, to share them with others as songs and paintings and creative mentoring. Like I said in my first post, I focused on embodying and showing the more vibrant, alive, connected, joyful way to be in the world that I found through my explorations.

And now, 8 years later, Trump has taken office again. And rather than wanting to turn away from the explicitly political realm, I’m finding that I want to turn towards it. I want to know what’s happening in the administration and what people and movements are doing in response. And I want to find ways to respond, too. But this time, I want to respond in a way only I can.

It’s hard to engage with the energy of frenzy and rush and fear and hatred and despair without taking all that on myself. I noticed those energies arising sharply as I read through my political Substack subscriptions right before this. And thoughts like fuck, we’re fucked. Or there’s nothing I can do to change any of this.

But now that I’m writing, and I’m in the role of active creator, I don’t feel or think those things. I feel clear, and powerful, and purposeful.

And the thought that’s arising now is the billionaires really don’t know what they’re missing out on.

I am free in a way that they could not even dream of being.

More to come next week.