Ideas for Getting Through November 2020

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Estimated Reading Time: 2.5 minutes

Anyone who is paying attention to the world of 2020 US politics, knows that this week is going to be one more tense rollercoaster of angst, confusion, frustration, and anger for so many folks--regardless of where one sits politically. 

Much of this is both a result of the way US politics have trended over the last 20 years, particularly influenced and made more extreme both by political partisanship, traditional media outlets (newspaper, television, radio), digital media (blogs, online news, Youtube, and much more), and social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4Chan).  Together, they are reinforcing different realities, amplifying misinformation, increasing disinformation, and festering the growth of conspiracy theories like never before.  

Thus, we enter the final days of an election season that has felt like it has been running since 2016 in a year when we have been hit by a global pandemic, economic disaster, and a racial justice movement on part with the 1960s Civil Rights movement.  It's exhausting and emotionally-ripe on so many different levels with some hope that maybe we will get some sense of rest and respite on the morning of November 4.  Not necessarily because whomever we want to win, wins but because maybe there will be some breathing room.  

But that feels very unlikely given the circumstances we find ourselves in.    

Thus, I share two things with folks.  

The first is A safe, sane way to navigate election night — and beyond from Axios that highlights the most effective ways to process and not-react but appropriately respond to how things will happen in the next few days.  

The second is a resource I put together after I pulling together responses from the following post:

Text reads: "hello friends! So next week--it has so much potential for chaos, stress, frustration, anger, etc...so I wanted to put out there a question for all of us feeling. What are some coping mechanisms you plan to employ? (and while I know there's a tendency to say things like "drink"--I'm hoping we can crowdsource ideas that others might find more useful than potentially self-destructive). And honestly, I'm asking this regardless of the outcome--even in the best situation, it's still gonna be hard, stressful, and depleting..."


After asking this, I was excited to hear from many friends.  Dozens of ideas streamed in and I've put them together into this resource:  Ideas for Getting Through Election Night and Beyond.

Take a look and feel free to send me additional recommendations to add or add comments on the document for additional ideas.  

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