Is Everyone Screaming or Is It Only Me

 Things have not been simple.

Things seldom are, but the last couple of months (hell, let’s call it the last 375 days) have not been simple at all.

The world feels louder than it used to, more demanding, more insistent. Every day seems to arrive carrying its own emergency, its own urgency, its own quiet expectation that we keep up with things changing at what I can only describe as an alarming rate.

Trying to find space to hold everything that’s been going on has been a challenge. Not just the big, obvious things, but the smaller, cumulative weight of them. The background noise that never really turns off.

I want to show up for myself.
To tend to my own life, grief, and exhaustion.

But I also want to show up for my people, for my neighbors, for the wider world in these continued, unprecedented times.

Some days it feels like those two desires are in conflict. Like caring deeply in all directions at once requires more capacity than I have access to.

And yet, opting out entirely doesn’t feel right either.

So I’ve been living somewhere in the middle doing what I can, when I can, and learning to sit with the discomfort of knowing it will never feel like enough.

Because in a lot of ways, given the circumstances, it can’t ever be enough.

Personal Grief, Meet Global Chaos

My inner world has always been loud. This isn't new, it’s probably not going to change any time soon.

I’m one of those people who never quite seems able to catch a break, and I still can’t tell if that’s by happenstance or by design. Probably a little of both. I’ve learned to expect movement, disruption, the next thing arriving before the last one has fully settled.

The other shoe to drop.

My life moves fast, so I move faster. Or at least I try to.

Slowing down feels counterintuitive when nothing around me ever seems to.

There’s always something else unfolding: another demand, another reason to stay alert. Even in moments that are supposed to be quiet, the background hum never really disappears. Rest becomes something theoretical rather than something that actually happens.

In that kind of environment, personal grief doesn’t arrive gently. It crashes into everything else already in motion. There’s no clean separation between what’s happening in my own life and what’s happening in the world at large.

The headlines bleed into private loss.
Private loss makes the headlines harder to stomach.
Each feeds the other in ways that are difficult to untangle.

Lately, it’s been harder to keep showing up for everything outside of me when so much of my energy is being spent tending to what’s inside. Licking my own wounds enough to show up for my life at all takes more effort than I’d like to admit.

Some days, just maintaining the basics (work, relationships, responsibilities) feels like an accomplishment, even if it doesn’t look like one from the outside.

When personal grief meets global chaos, the exhaustion becomes layered. I don’t always know which fatigue belongs to which source, only that I’m carrying more than I used to. I’m still here. I’m still trying. But I’m learning, slowly, that there are limits to how much a single person can reasonably hold at once.

And as I work on healing I’m also learning that perhaps I don’t have the capacity to carry it that I always thought I did. 

Held in Parallel

There are a number of things in my personal life that have been unfolding alongside everything else, and while each of them matters, I don’t have the capacity to give any single one the attention it probably deserves.

So they’re getting acknowledged here instead; briefly, and without much elaboration.

Some of those things are private. Some are logistical. Some are unresolved. Together, they’ve required more energy than I’ve had easy access to for months.

Music has remained one of the few spaces where things still feel coherent. Playing shows and spending time in that world has been grounding in a way that’s hard to replicate elsewhere, and it’s something I’d like to be doing more consistently.

All of this has been happening against a broader backdrop that feels increasingly unstable. There’s a persistent sense that large-scale decisions are being made without much clarity or consensus, while public attention cycles rapidly between issues without ever fully settling on any of them. The result is a low-grade, ambient unease that’s difficult to locate or respond to directly.

In that context, it’s easy for personal concerns to feel out of place or disproportionate when compared to the scale of what’s happening globally. At the same time, they don’t stop existing simply because larger forces are in motion.

Navigating that imbalance, the expansive chasm between private life and public reality, has been one of the quieter challenges of the past several months.

Refusing to Perform Stability

There is, obviously, a baseline level of performance that still has to be maintained (unfortunately).

I can’t afford to lose my job because I’m not handling my life particularly well, even if I don’t love the job itself. I also can’t show up to a gig unprepared or scattered and risk doing damage to my reputation as a performer. There are real consequences attached to those things, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t be honest.

So yes, there is a level of composure I still have to hold. That part is unavoidable. It’s not ideal, but it’s real.

What I don’t have to do is perform stability everywhere. I don’t have to come here and write as though everything is fine, or package this season as growth, or insist on good vibes only.

I don’t have to pretend I’m handling things perfectly just because I’m often expected to be palatable, funny, or easy to consume online.

I also don’t have to let my overwhelm spill outward. Not coping well doesn’t give me permission to be careless with the people around me.

I can still show up with basic kindness.

I can still do my part without turning my stress into someone else’s problem.

There are places where things need to be held together, and places where they don’t.

Letting that distinction exist, letting things be where they can be, is not giving up. It’s choosing not to perform more than is necessary.

And for now, that’s enough.

Solidarity, Not Misguided Hope

Balancing all of this often feels impossible. And I know I’m not the only person struggling with that particular weight.

The sense of being pulled in too many directions at once
Personally
Professionally
Morally
is widespread right now, even if it’s rarely acknowledged plainly.

That doesn’t automatically make it easier. Knowing something is shared doesn’t dissolve the strain of living through it.

But it does matter.

There’s a quiet relief in recognizing that difficulty, confusion, and exhaustion aren’t individual failures, they’re reasonable responses to a complicated moment.

Feelings are messy.
They don’t arrive in neat, productive forms.
They contradict each other.
They resist timelines and resolutions.

Pretending otherwise only adds another layer of pressure that no one actually needs.

The same is true at a larger scale.

When things are unstable, when fear and uncertainty are circulating widely, there’s a tendency to default to blunt tools (see: shame, urgency, moral posturing) in the name of fixing things quickly.

But those approaches rarely create understanding or connection. More often, they harden people, push them away, or leave them feeling defensive rather than engaged.

If there’s anything I’m trying to hold onto right now, it’s this: solidarity doesn’t require perfection, and it doesn’t require constant clarity.

It starts with recognizing that many of us are overwhelmed, still trying, and still capable of showing up for one another in small, imperfect ways. That feels more sustainable than hope that demands performance, and more honest than pretending any of this is simple.