How are you staying sane during these insane Bush years?

I'd heard that Elvis had once shot a TV set and I didn't understand why until Bush came along. Sometime during 2003, I went off the deep end. I'd start to read a newspaper, come across the screwing we'd gotten the previous day, and shredded the paper. Ignoring most TV news wasn't hard. I started doing that during the O.J. trial.

But you can't sit around wondering how many more hours, minutes and seconds these thugs have left in office. So to hold onto my sanity in my spare time, I rediscovered books, spend time down at the beach, am once again working on yoga (physical and mental) exercises, and reading, posting, bitching and moaning on DU.

Nonetheless, there is still at least one day a week where I'll catch a story about the sociopath in the White House, or some other GOP head case and get an urge to pull an Elvis.

So how are you staying sane?

Assumes a fact not in evidence.

As in who says I've retained my sanity?

My alcohol consumption has risen dramatically ... between the Bush / Rove lies and
the "I have a connection to God" claim for the Bullshit Bushies it is some "entertaining" times

This is exactly what I need.

Damnitols just don't cut it anymore.

can I borrow this?

Puleeze!

I lost my sanity back in 2003. I was barely hanging on to my sanity for 3 years, but then I lost it completely.

I feel like shooting my TV on a regular basis. I have a whopping two channels in English: one is CNN World and one is AFN -- both good reasons to shoot my TV, especially the latter.

I have neighbors, I have community, I have family. There is service to be done, booboos to be kissed, wild bunnies in my backyard needing weeds to munch on, a husband to be hugged ....... that flaming anal sphincter in the White House can't change any of that.

but this administration has been the biggest challenge to my 11 years of sobriety. He can't bring me down - I just keep repeating "this too shall pass" and hope that my son does not have to live through a period of time as bad as the 80s, 90s and early 2000's have been - With the exception of WJC I have had to endure Reagan, GHWB and GWB - that is 20 years of misery.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty upset that we are carpet bombing Iraq (and Kosovo) with radioactivity. And I'm none too keen on Walmart or Exxon's antics. But somehow the lady down the street who smiles at me every time I bring her tuna casserole just carries more mental weight.

I struggle everyday. Luckily my husband understands but it gets tiring! I have so much to be grateful for. My oldest daughter just graduated from college and has gotten a great job in Chicago. My other daughter will be a junior at Emerson in Boston, (almost lost that one to crazy christians when she was in high school!) and my youngest will be a sophmore in HS in September and is a great kid. I have been married for 23 years and still love my husband. We are all healthy and I couldn't be more proud of my family.

As my middle daughter tells me we have running water and plenty to eat. How much more can I ask for?


A government I could trust would be nice.


I will try to be more grateful for what I do have and I will cling to my sanity with the hope that we will get through this and we will have our country back.

everyone should keep a blessing log. Get a notebook and very single solitary day write down at least one good thing in your life and be specific. I don't mean go all "pollyanna". But making time every day to count blessings- IMHO - is a real perspective saver - especially when life is dragging you through hell.

Perception does carry the weight with people, doesn't it. I used to journal all my built up feelings and they were hard feelings, sadness, anger, etc. Around 7 years ago, I had a breakdown. I found an excellent spiritual counselor and she has tried for five years to get me to journal again. I didn't want to write down, and give focus to any more pain... just had enough of it, ya know? I've been tinkering lately with "gratitude journaling", the thought of it, sounds so much more positive to me than the other kind of journaling. Your bright outlook is catching me at a moment, when I am overwhelmed with our societies faults, yet I have very many things to be grateful for, as you do. I owe a lot of thanks for what I have in my life and it is the perception that affords us the strength, the hope and the ability to move on, go forward in life, with a smile...

Thanks for your words.. you are a ray of light.

and I got a hearty laugh out of "that flaming anal sphincter in the White House"

:hi:

and Thanks!

and since we all kept breeding, as I am here, I guess I can take this. Besides that I lived through the 60's. with 5 kids in the middle of a military society.:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: Go for it.

even the Soviet threat and Vietnam didn't scare me like this.

We are in the hands of EVIL!!

I am sure my ancestors lived through times that really tried mens souls but this seems to be another time like that. I will say that living in the South in the 60's with children, I felt the country was coming apart. I once recall going in to a small country store in SC and a man was sitting their with a shot gun on his lap. My children's eyes could not get off the thing and as I always took them with me they went into the store with me. We felt we had gone into another country. They also had to live in a town that had the state police move into their schools and people turned over school buses. I tell you I felt in a lot of fear in my own country and wondered between all that and the war if we would make it. This gov. changing all our basic rules is maybe a little more scary. It seems almost more deep seated in hate for some thing. It maybe that I am just getting old.

....a couple times a week but the more crap this WH Idiot pulls the more I want to go looking for John Hinkley.:pals: Nuff said on that.:shrug:

That's it boys and girls, DU is the only thing keeping me even half way sane these days, God help us all if there wasn't DU.:cry:

:yourock: All I can say is DU is saving a few people's lives.:yourock:

I can't imagine what it would be like for me to live there again.

Dirty, plastic, cheap, selfish, superficial,and a few other choice words.

(Not everybody, not everywhere)

.....you lived where you are? :pals:

Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Bill Maher, and my tribe of liberal friends.
DU has been critical. I take little breaks at work (here now) and get sustenance from you people.
I'd be heartsick all the time if not for my daily doses of wit and intelligence.

Except about 2 weeks ago, my blood pressure was through the stratosphere.

I've laid off booze completely for a few weeks, and taken up jogging to get the weight and BP down. Another month, I can drink again.

Learning to be an observer is one of them.

Haven't watched the media whores in years. Big help.

Also...realizing and accepting what you can control and what you can't control...your life (hopefully) and the rest of the world respectively.

people here put things in a perspective that makes more sense.

be. I talk to friends about what is happening to our country due to Bush and his cohorts and we wind up punctuating our sentences with growls of absolute frustration. Is that still sanity?

and reality.

Same here. The frustration is everywhere. Sane people don't usually LIKE being abused.

knowing that as bad as things are, they have been worse and probably will get better.

This should be a Golden Age of technology and enlightenement but there have been precious few of those in human history, and we're not living through a Depression, an occupation by Mongol hordes, the French revolution, or any of the other seemingly "normal" staes of plague, ignorance, poverty and other horrors that have characterized most of history.

In our short national history, we have seen far worse times and we have had the resilience to take at least one and a half steps forward for each step back. If we lose the hope that we can move forward again, we are lost forever.

I don't watch CNN or MSNBC or any news other than occasional CBS Evening News. I watch BBC instead.

DU, of course. Knowing there are so many like minds out there is a big comfort.

Separating the national scene from the personal scene, as Rosemary points out upthread. At the same time, everytime I go to sleep at night I think of an Iraqi whose house has been blown to bits by my tax dollars. Everytime I drive to the local hardware store, I am conscious of the fact that they can't do these simple things, like buy a screw or a nut to fix something. Even when I fell last year and twisted both ankles and could barely walk, what I thought of was how fortunate I was to be able to recoup in the quiet, comfort and privacy of my own home. I thought about how horrible it would be to not even have access to medical care. Or to have to be in pain with no place to go.

So while I take solace in my personal life, I am continually thinking about how the usurpers have robbed others of that ability.

Always look for opportunities to educate people on bush and his policies. Talking to people on a one-on-one basis is important. Right now I'm doing the little toy soldiers thing, leaving them in grocery stores, the library, etc.




Cher

Great line, by the way.

I'd heard that Elvis had once shot a TV set and I didn't understand why until Bush came along.

can vent and curse on DU!!

and lots of time spent with loved ones. And chocolate. :)

Clean and sober for 21 years now, but the last six have been very, very hard, If I didn't have DU to lean on I don't know where I'd be, I can't go back to boozing, I know that.
Instead I come here to keep here to keep what little sliver of sanity I still posses and with a lot of help from my friends here I manage to keep it together.

I know also that there have been much worse times on human history, in different societies. I have the fortune of being born an American and escaping war, I wasn't a Vietnamese, a korean, an Iraqi, born into a time when death was common place.

I wasn't around for any of the world wars, when death reigned freely, nor at any other dangerous time. I've been alive long enough now, so that when we reap the whirlwind, I won't care about myself, for all the youngsters I hope that we regain our senses before it's too late.
I would like them to have a clean safe world to live in.

So, to stay sane, to stay sober I come here to DU, let go these socs rant, rave, make a thousand typos, that's how I'm doing it.

as we face a profound crisis of confidence in govt in our so-called democratic society. To be serially abused by unseen forces, to live everyday with free-floating anxiety about what is next to come at the hands of our diabolical "leaders"...is profound stress. This kind of sustained worry and anger has such destructive effects. Only the dimmest among us can remain oblivious under these conditions.

I like to conjure a picture of this insane house of Boosh collapsing and imagining a better world being created in its wake. Maybe this is escapist, but everybody knows they've had their chance. Now it's ours. We have a mandate for change as never before. That one thought keeps me sane.

on life the last part of 04 on thru 05 because it was so bad, but then I took a very long trip abroad through many countries which helped greatly to restore some sense of soul. Got back recently and started to hang out here on DU and it's been a great decision. I never thought it was possible to have a government IN AMERICA that is so incredibly and amzaingly across the board horrible, that it can actually cause physical, mental and emotional anguish to its citizenry. Wow.