Do It Anyway: Writing While the World Burns

Writing while the world burns isn’t naive, it’s defiant. This is a call to keep creating, keep fighting, and build something beautiful despite everything.

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On writing, policy, and building something beautiful despite everything

"Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate; it will seduce you. Resistance is insidious."
—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

I have nothing poetic to say about collapse today: no silver linings, no call to hope, no gentle metaphors about wildflowers sprouting through concrete. The air is poisoned, the courts are rigged, and the men who would burn it all down for profit are not in hiding, they’re on Fox News, in Congress, on Supreme Court benches, and inside every unmoderated algorithm pushing genocide-as-content.

And yet I’m writing.

Not because I feel inspired. Not because I believe a single essay can turn the tide. I’m writing because to do so is an act of refusal. I will not go quietly. And if all I can do is document, rage, map, or stitch together the last scraps of meaning with trembling hands, then so be it. Creation, in the face of annihilation, is the most rebellious act I’ve got.

The Lie of Despair

Here’s what Resistance sounds like in this moment:

• “It’s too late.”

• “No one cares.”

• “You’re just preaching to the choir.”

• “You don’t have the authority/energy/perfect words.”

• “You’re not the one to do this.”

That’s not truth. That’s propaganda. Resistance isn’t just internal anymore; it’s systemic. It’s been industrialized. It comes to you in push notifications and well-funded nihilism. It wears the face of that “reasonable” friend who shrugs and says, “Well, what can we do?” It’s despair packaged as realism, hopelessness framed as intelligence.

But no system of power, no authoritarian regime, no extraction economy ever caved to “realism.” They fall when people, bruised, bitter, bone-tired people, keep going anyway.

Rage is Not the Enemy

I am not afraid of rage. I trust rage more than I trust hope right now. Rage keeps me alert. Rage burns away the fog. Rage reminds me I still care. And under that rage, like bedrock under a wildfire, is grief.

Grief for what we’ve already lost: species, cities, dreams. Grief for what’s being taken in real time: autonomy, safety, freedom, and each other.

You don’t have to get past the grief to act. You don’t have to clean yourself up emotionally before you speak. You don’t need to be calm to be wise. These are lies we’ve inherited from power, that dignity requires detachment, that anger discredits you, that mourning makes you weak. I reject all of it.

Write in the ruins. Paint with blood. Organize while sobbing. Vote while heartbroken. Do it all while feeling everything and do it anyway.

Policy is Not Boring, It’s Survival

When I talk about Project 2026 and write about housing, reproductive justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and public healthcare, it is not from some lofty policy perch. It is from inside a body. One that is aging, female, exhausted, furious, and fully aware that none of these things are theoretical.

Policy is not paperwork. It is life expectancy. It is the maternal death rate. It is the difference between your kid being safe at school or being groomed by an extremist algorithm.

If you think writing about policy isn’t sexy enough, go fuck yourself, respectfully. Because the Right has been writing policy for decades while we make memes and wait for vibes to shift.

We don’t need another thought piece on “polarization.” We need blueprints. We need legislative drafts, mutual aid logistics, constitutional analysis, public health proposals, and political narratives that do not concede a single inch to fascism, even when it is wrapped in moderation.

The Work is Ugly, and Still Worth Doing

No one tells you how ugly the work will be. That writing about justice will make you feel like a fraud. That showing up will cost you sleep, friends, and illusions. That the people you love may not come with you. That the Resistance inside your own skin may be louder than any troll or fascist or pundit could ever be.

Do it anyway.

Even when it’s thankless.
Even when it’s lonely.
Even when your hands shake, your inbox is empty, and the future feels like ash.

Do it because you can. Because someone has to. Because the alternative is silence, and silence is where fascism thrives.

Let’s Burn Beautiful

I don’t know how much time we have. But I know this: I will not spend it apologizing for being too loud, too radical, too emotional, or too late.

If we’re going down, I want to go down writing. Building. Screaming truth. Passing tools to the next person. Fighting like hell, not for a guarantee of winning, but for the right to say we showed up.

So, here's to the artists, organizers, weirdos, and wounded. Here’s to the policy drafters, the Substack screamers, the rage knitters, the grief dancers, and the burned-out activists with one match left.

Light it. Write it. Build it. Burn beautiful.

Do it anyway.