As the sun sets on the night before Election Day, Laura is the clear winner of our pre-election Anti-Anxiety Weekend Challenge. Her thoughtful, beneficial suggestions surely helped many of you pass a peaceful weekend, but I spent the last three days with a pit of dread in my stomach, eating too much junk food and drinking too much wine as I devoured end-of-the-world editorials, scrolled through taunting Twitter threads and switched between cable news stations as they covered the final days of the 2020 presidential campaign. I voted early in Chicago last week, so none of this is information I will act on. I just Can’t. Look. Away.
In addition to Laura’s curated list of calming activities, many other media outlets are sharing ways for Americans to chill out. And we ALL need to. According to the Wall Street Journal (and everyone I know), election anxiety is a bi-partisan issue. It may be some time before we know who our next president will be, and waiting in uncertainty is not our nation’s strong suit. Here are a few of those resources:
- Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times offers these 10 Ways to Calm Down. I like her advice “focus on your feet.”
- At NPR, Ritu Chatterjee gives a succinct 4 Ways to Keep Calm including “look for signs of hope”.
- And Vogue magazine provides this guide to deal with the debilitating symptoms of stress. (Overwhelmed anyone?)
But I don’t want to cop out on the challenge entirely. I do have a couple practices that have been helping me stay sane-ish. They are: 1) playing with my dog and 2) watching the sun set here in Florida. No matter what happens with this election, my dog will be adorable and the sun will rise and set. Signs of hope, indeed.
Cope as best you can, friends. Thankfully, tonight the sun sets on this stressful, contentious campaign. Tomorrow is Election Day! Vote if you haven’t!
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