I love the news. Always have. I watch it like people watch sports, and, while I understand that a break from the news - especially in a cycle like the current one - is a wise decision, it doesn’t usually feel like a necessity for me. Because the news doesn’t stress me out as much as it enrages me. It doesn’t floor me as much as it inspires a sense of righteous agency. And that’s different. The news doesn’t stress me out in the way that finalizing the summer schedule does, as I stand there immobile, hands hovering over the computer keyboard, as though whatever decision we make about Aidy doing one or two weeks of sleepaway camp might wreak irreversible havoc on our lives.

It’s silly, I know, to compare the state of America to planning our family’s summer schedule. But the point I’m hoping to make is that I work hard to not be a person who is hamstrung by either, because I believe that this sort of hand-wringing, while completely understandable, is not only pointless, but, if you let it go too far, harmful. You can overthink yourself into inaction. And that kind of anxiety can be contagious.

J and I own a Tesla. I know. And the truth is we bought it well before we knew Elon Musk was going to play such a large, destructive part in dismantling so many of our country’s institutions, and jobs, and values - so haphazardly! so abruptly! - but we did not buy it before we knew he was crazy. We knew. And we had discussions about it, intense, but civil, where J was for, and I was against, until I accepted his reasoning, because some of it was sound: Tesla had a much more extended charging network than the other EVs available, important for fairly lengthy daily commute; Tesla prices had dipped significantly and the incentives were very good; the model we were considering had a flip up third row, helpful in a family of five; and it was a cool car.

This last one didn’t compel me, but the others I eventually accepted. Art vs. the artist, and all. Now, of course, that multi-faceted excuse doesn’t seem like nearly enough justification and I’ll take our (all gas) VW Atlas over the Tesla when I need to run an errand because I feel so conflicted about this. I’ve always loved ethical dilemnas but I don’t love it when I’m the subject of my own quandary, it turns out.

Another example. I bought airline tickets to visit with my high school friends in New Orleans at the end of the month. Immediate, joyful, anticipation! For the trip out, I booked a nonstop flight on Avelo, a somewhat new, low-cost airline that flies out of smaller hubs. It’s been a real boon for New Haven, and very popular among friends. Until this week, that is, when stories broke that Avelo would be working with the Trump administration by facilitating deportation flights out of Arizona. Now my flight was ideal but immoral, and fighting back futile. I already paid for the ticket.

This is where the news - once proof that I, with my informed liberal hot takes and my yelling at the television, was doing things right - has gotten more complicated for me as of late. My choices aren’t right, my impulses unclear. Am I being performative? Am I thinking through the repercussions of our collective acts? What is the fallout from shopping on Amazon? Do I speak out on social media, or boycott it? It’s so easy to let the questions rule the day, and whatever activities you had planned - the real concrete stuff of everyday life - fall by the wayside.

In addition to the rage I feel as a Democrat in 2025, I am overcome with petty annoyance: STOP MUCKING UP ALL OUR CHOICES, YOU GUYS. It is too expensive to trade in this vehicle!

I don’t know how many of you have seen the show, “The Good Place,” but it’s a favorite among our family, and the question of being a good person in a complicated, modern world is at its heart. It is a messy, fascinating issue, and these days, I find myself in its grasp more than I’d like, chasing down possibilities instead of moving on with my messy, fascinating life. Contemplating scenarios instead of enacting real change whether it’s personal or bigger picture. Or just walking the dog to clear my head, a beneficial act for me, and for her, that yields additional ones, like a chat with a neighbor.

It’s predictable for a person like me, who owns a Tesla for christ’s sake, to recommend that we go easy on ourselves in these high-octane times. But I’m not sure that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Because I think we should go hard. Live our beliefs. Hit ‘em where it hurts, so to speak.

But keep moving on, too. Keep moving through. Don’t let making the right choices become your paralysis, or let the news become your entire life. You can be the problem and the solution. In other words: make the right choices from behind the wheel of your controversial car (that’s metaphor for you, and reality for me).

One thing I have always told my children is that you can do good even when you’re not feeling your best. You can be having a bad day, and still make the right choices. It’s a form of integrity. It’s how you take a deep breath and decide not to unleash hell on your brother for doing a Taekwondo flying side kick near your face when you are trying to finish your very challenging environmental science homework. It is how you focus and listen, or at the very least try to listen, to your husband when he’s getting in the weeds on genetic sequencing or splicing or something, and you are super exhausted from obsessing over the eighteen headlines you got about that day’s stock market swings. When you, by the way, got a degree in English and Philosophy and don’t understand the words he is saying.

I think we live in this complicated world by getting comfortable with making the best, perhaps imperfect, choices we are able to make, again, and again. It will never be enough, it won’t always be the right call. We are so beautifully, so consistently problematic.

I was walking Aidy home from school this week when I stopped by some forsythia bushes in my neighborhood that grow in a house-free strip of woods near our house, and don’t seem to belong to anybody. They’re blooming now, bright yellow. We don’t have them in our yard, but every year I collect them from somewhere to put in a vase on my dining room table. On that afternoon, Aidy, at first, deemed this fine, exciting even, until she started worrying about the cars driving past and what those people might think about my wrenching branches from an unclaimed bush like that on the side of the road; carrying them proudly home like a prize and maybe like a thief.

I got all caught up in her concern, at first, which was easy to do because my mind’s been trending that way so often lately. Were these really nobody’s bushes? And what right did I have to take the branches like that? What do people think of me, and is this yet another in a growing list of transgressions? But I stopped myself, paused the spiral mid spin. “This is what I do each spring,” I told Aidy. ‘It makes me happy.” And we kept walking, yellow flowers, imperfect decisions, spring traditions that keep us anchored in his unmoored world, and all.