Author: Luke M.

Sometimes it feels like the only reason I come back to this blog is to write about massive changes or terrible things happening in my life. But I want to document some of these things as a means of remembrance, especially when it comes to my pets. Losing Midnight last month was, for us, the marking of an era.

Prior to Gremlin and Bastion, I’d never had a cat live past 10 or 11. We had outdoor cats when I was a kid, so that’s not entirely surprising. Which also meant we went through animals quite often. I lost a lot of cats and several dogs throughout my childhood. I don’t think I realized, until I was responsible for raising my own animals, just how much longer a life they can lead by being indoor cats. We lost Bastion at 16, Gremlin at 17, and now Midnight at 18.

18 years old. That’s baffling to me. That’s so long for a cat. I’m 40 years old, which means Midnight was with us for pretty close to half my life up to this point. I still can’t even conceptualize that, even having lived through it. I’ve never had an animal – short of my real childhood dog Smokey – have such a lasting impact on my life.

I also didn’t really realize, until Bastion got sick, the level of responsibility taking care of elderly animals entails. I hate having this thought, but I don’t think my parents would have ever done the things we’ve done for our pets. Partially because they had a very different way of looking at pets, but also partially because it’s damned expensive, and pet insurance didn’t really exist back then.

Over the last few years Midnight had developed the same chronic renal issues that stole Bastion from us. She’d lost half her body weight in that time, dropping from 11 pounds to under 6. She slept most of the day, curled up in her heated bed, but when she wanted to be she was still pretty spry, which is impressive for a cat the equivalent of over 100 years old.

In Midnight’s case her disease moved much slower, and was more treatable in the long term. Bastion passed away only about six months after his diagnosis. Midnight stayed with us for almost three years. It involved a lot of work: subcutaneous fluids every day (which involves inserting an IV needle under her skin and dripping 100ml of saline solution into her system), prescription food, and four different medications, delivered by pill and shot. It was a lot of work. Work I’d do every single day for the rest of my life if it meant Midnight would still be with us. And without that work, she definitely would’ve died much sooner.

My wife and I married very young, and at the beginning of our relationship we knew we wanted pets. We were both animal people, and it only took a year to pick up Gremlin and Bastion – found in Port Angeles on our first anniversary. Once they were a part of our lives, we knew we were doomed to be “multiple animal” people. Even though we were both dog lovers, we were living in small apartments, and that environment wasn’t right for dogs. But cats… cats we knew we could accommodate.

One day at work, Christina saw a post about someone giving away kittens, and called me. Her birthday was coming up, and another kitten was her birthday wish. How could I refuse?

Our friend Karl and I went down to a standard cookie-cutter apartment complex in Renton to have a look. We were led to the closet in the main room, where the mama cat lay in a large box with her brood. There were still five or six kittens available of all different colors, and a couple other people were also browsing. They sat in the middle of the floor with a couple of feisty little calicos. Obviously I wasn’t going to disturb their choice, so I looked in the box.

I knew pretty much instantly which one was ours. A little tuxedo kitten, not quite a runt but definitely smaller than her siblings, hung out in the corner of the box, away from the other cats. She didn’t come to the edge and meow, nor try to get my attention in any other way. She just looked up, and I fell in love. Into a smaller box she went, and Karl helped keep her there for the half-hour drive home.

Christina reinforced my decision by falling in love with her just as quickly as I had. When Midnight came home with us she gained some energy, partly just from being in a new place, but partly from being introduced to her new brothers, who took to her the instant she set foot in the house. The three of them would go on to rule our lives for 18 more years, masters of the household they graciously let us live in. And Midnight was the queen.

She was, without a doubt, the most imperious and standoffish of the three. She demanded attention on her own time, and doled out love in parcels at her leisure. She was an energetic kitten and a studious adult. She frequently played the boys against each other, but just as frequently could be found curled up in a heap with both of them. They loved each other unconditionally, and we couldn’t have asked for a better relationship over the years. No animosity, no real fights, no special circumstances required. She was instantly and forever part of the family.

She always surprised us, though, when new people came around. Several times people house-sat for us while we were away, and we’d always come back to reports of how affectionate and loving Midnight was, and all we could do was shake our heads in wonder. It’s hard to show direct affection to your own subjects when you’re a queen, I guess, but there were no such social constructs with those outside her influence.

After Gremlin and Bastion passed, we knew for sure where she had been directing her affection, because it all came to us. Through both of their illnesses, she was their caretaker, frequently cleaning them and cuddling with them when they weren’t feeling well. When they were gone, it was clear she was lonely. She realized she didn’t need to be, and finally started showing us the kind of affection she’d always shown them. She became almost needy, and it was both heartwarming and bittersweet.

On Sunday, January 6th, we were giving her her fluids, and her breathing became a little labored. It’s probably not something I would have noticed, except that it was the same sign we got at the end of Gremlin’s life. Cats are obligate nose-breathers, so when they breath through their mouths, something is definitely wrong. My instincts proved right: We took her to the vet the next day, and found that she had fluids in her chest cavity. Just like Gremlin.

Once that happens, there’s not much more that can be done. The quality of life for a cat at that stage is not great, and not long. Rather than desperately try  to find a way to extend her already impressive lifespan by another few months – a selfish move that wouldn’t have been in her best interests – we decided to let her go. She came home with us that night, and it was both the hardest and most fulfilling night of my life.

We spent as much time with her as we could, at the end. Lavishing her with affection and cuddles, giving her treats, and getting as much out of those last few hours as we could. We cried a lot. Grieved before she was even gone. It’s amazing, in those last few hours of dreading the morning, how every minute felt like an eternity, and yet it felt like we had so few left to spend with her. But I am so, so thankful we spent them with her, and had a chance to say a proper goodbye.

Driving her to the vet the next morning was one of the hardest moments of my life. Weirdly, sitting with her at the end felt easier than the lead-up. Her end was peaceful, wrapped in a warm blanket in our arms, hopefully knowing just how much she was loved, and how achingly she’d be missed.

Gremlin, Bastion, and Midnight were our first pets. They were a unit. The genesis of our family. In total, the three of them were with us for almost two decades. Each one of their deaths has had a massive impact on us, and the three of them all being gone now feels like the end of an era. I know life goes on and new eras will come and go, but figuring out a new dynamic was a challenge – in spite of knowing it would someday come – I never really prepared myself for.

Wherever you are, Midnight, I hope you’re happy and warm, and curled up in a big pile with your brothers again. We love you so, so much. Always.

I’ve been on Twitter for almost a decade now. In truth, I have no idea why I joined Twitter in the first place, and I rarely posted to it in 2009. In 2010, I began using it to promote the After The Fact podcast, and my usage spiked considerably. Over the years it morphed into my “author” account, leading into and following the publication of Construct. Through all that time, it was also my personal social media space, where I’d post about any random thought that came into my head. Over that time I’ve controlled a total of five Twitter accounts: @GeekElite, @AfterTheFactPod, @TradeSecretsPod, @ChroniclerSaga, and – most recently – @PixelartMeeple. Now, all but one of those are gone (and the last is effectively a placeholder).

Back when I started on the platform, I thought – like most people I knew, honestly – it was stupid. How could you convey any manner of thought in 140 characters? Little did I know… My early years on Twitter I discovered one potent aspect of the platform that kept me coming back: Access.

People had their guard down back then. You could Tweet at minor celebrities and actually get a reply. After we started up Trade Secrets, I started talking to my favorite comic book creators on Twitter, and would get into actual conversations with people I openly admired. If you go back and listen to the early years of Trade Secrets, we have interviews on that show with creators like Cullen Bunn, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Matt Fraction – people we’d never have the same kind of access to today. And it was all because we’d built an initial rapport on Twitter.

Over the years my Twitter usage grew significantly. In all my 10 years on the platform my follower count capped out at just over 500, but I also wasn’t pushing real hard for followers. I was enjoying my time interacting with people I never thought I’d get to talk to. It helped us garner podcast listeners, and eventually helped me to promote my debut novel. I thought I’d be on the platform for a long time. Until things turned dark.

Look: I’m a middle-aged, white, cis, heterosexual man. I don’t have the kinds of problems on Twitter that women, people of color, non-binary folks, and other minorities have on the platform. I’m not assaulted by nazis and Trumpists, I generally don’t get trolled unless it’s in good fun. But people I know do. Friends. Acquaintances. Colleagues. And Twitter does nothing about it. In their wishy-washy corporate stand for “fairness”, their mush-mouthed, limp-dicked platitudes about solving the very real issues Twitter has raised in society in general dig into me like a splinter. As a platform, they refuse to take a stand, and I can’t abide that anymore.

But I’ll be totally honest: That’s not the main reason I left Twitter. I left because it’s a goddamned productivity sinkhole.

Twitter – like all social media platforms – is designed to mine your attention. You’re not a customer, you’re an asset. Your eyes being glued to their site is what makes them money, because they can point to those numbers and sell ad space. And in order to keep those numbers rising, they’ll employ every psychological and sociological trick in the book to keep your attention. To stoke your FOMO so you keep logging back in, keep scrolling through shit you’ve already seen, keep clicking on shit you don’t even want, keep arguing about shit you don’t really care about, keep feeding the algorithms that tell them they can mine X-hours of engagement per user every day.

And those hooks work on me like a goddamned charm.  I’d surf Twitter on my phone at every opportunity. At dinner, in the bathroom, in bed at night, first thing after waking up. Every single moment of “downtime” I had, I’d be on Twitter filling that space with bullshit. I’m the guy – and I’m definitely not the only one, admit it – who’d close down the Twitter app on my phone at night, then look at my screen and absentmindedly just click the goddamned icon and open it up again.

This is the main reason I don’t believe they’ll ever actually solve any of the problems they have with abuse: because it’s not in their best interests to do so. They’ll continue to treat their users like shit in favor of numbers, keep trying to code algorithms to solve very human, very nebulous issues that require the judgment calls of real people. The problem is their judgment is genuinely faulty, if they even decide to employ it at all.

Their systems fucking work. These behaviors are not a mistake. They’re neither unintentional nor harmless. As innocuous as you may think this behavior is in the moment, this is the result of engineers and psychologists doing everything in their power to design as system that keeps you glued to its interface, whether it’s good for your productivity or not. It is absolutely a designed addiction, and it’s completely uncontrolled at the moment. Silicon Valley is moving so fast in this direction, doing everything they can to manipulate peoples’ attention, and there are zero regulations to put a damper on it.

But that’s a little more ranty than I’d intended to get here. The point I’m trying to make, from a personal standpoint, is that all that psychological design and social engineering worked so well on me that it destroyed my productivity. For years. The attention economy has very real, very negative connotations for sustained, thought-intensive work, and that’s exactly what I was suffering from. And not only did it keep me glued to their platform, but it made me feel bad for wanting to leave. It made me scared to leave. Realizing how irrational, ridiculous, and very likely manipulated that fear actually was is what finally made me pull the trigger.

The closest I’d ever come to deleting my account in the past was in October of 2018, when I downloaded my Twitter data and almost – ALMOST – deactivated my account. But I backed off. I started questioning my own decisions, wondering if all the negativity I felt toward the platform, all the frustration and anger building up inside me, all the productivity loss, was actually Twitter’s fault. The platform as a whole had gaslighted me into thinking it wasn’t.

But it was. And the moment finally came when I got frustrated and angry on Twitter, at Twitter, and when I thought about deleting my account it didn’t generate any fear or anxiety. Only calm detachment, and some curiosity about what it would mean.  That was the sign, to me, that I was done. That I can no longer abide the combination of attention mining, apathy, and genuine insidiousness that makes up Twitter as a company and a platform, and could no longer tolerate it’s effect on my life.

So, here I am, Twitterless after almost a decade. I’m not as calm and detached as I would like to be. I’m definitely nervous I’ll lose contact with some of the people I feel I’ve become friends with via the platform. That fear isn’t nebulous, either, it’s rooted in experience. I left Facebook a couple of years ago for similar reasons, and I’ve entirely lost contact with quite a few people I thought were my actual friends. Like, full on ghosted. If I’m not on Facebook, it’s like I’m not alive.

And I know that’ll happen again. I put out a call on my Twitter account a few weeks ago, asking my 500+ followers if anyone would even care if I left. I got two replies. No one gives a shit. But removing myself from social platforms like this shrinks my world. That’s the one negative effect that I’m struggling with. I have alternative methods to keep in touch – events I run, Slack channels, Discord – and no one wants to engage me there. I can cope with cutting myself off from insignificant interactions with a wide swath of people. What’s harder is coming to grips with cutting off meaningful interactions with the few I enjoyed interacting with. And narrowing others ability to interact with me.

I can only hope the positive benefits outweigh all of that.

For further info on some of the ideas I only barely touched on here, read Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter and Deep Work by Cal Newport.

This week, I deleted my Facebook account.

Or, rather, my Facebook account was “officially” deleted. I’ve been working on ridding myself of it for a couple of months now, trying to do things the easy way, when I realized Facebook just doesn’t allow for an easy way to do… well, pretty much anything.

I posted to my wall multiple times that I’d be leaving the service, asking for all of my Facebook friends to send me an e-mail address so I could stay in contact. No one saw the posts. It was endemic of one of my biggest problems with Facebook: how the site and its algorithms closely control and prune everything you see, to provide you with the image of your world they want to present.

And it’s gotten worse in recent years. If one of my friends’ posts blows up with comments, it’ll constantly float to the top of my feed, even if it’s days or weeks old. You know what kind of posts float to the top? Inflammatory bullshit. Save that, it’ll be reasoned posts full of inflammatory comments from people whom I’d never otherwise interact with. I spent so much time pruning, blocking, and curating on Facebook that it became a chore, and I never really saw the posts I actually wanted to interact with.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the attention economy, and how social media sites are specifically built to mine your attention and keep you riveted so they can drive ad revenue. And you’re never riveted to useful or interesting information, you’re just praying for another Like or desperately hoping for that red notification icon. People, myself included, feed on it. It’s not random, neutral, or innocent. It’s not just a service they put out and let people use as they see fit, it’s a tool for them to mine your time, where users are very clearly resources, not customers. No other service in the world has such simultaneously high user retention and low user value. Everyone uses it, but no one really wants to.

And that’s the mindset I encountered as I was in the process of leaving. After several weeks of responses to my posts piddling in, I decided to just go down my Friends List and message everyone individually for contact information. I told them I was leaving and would like to stay in contact, and requested an e-mail address. I got personal replies from all but four people, which showed me the futility of those original public posts. I, unfortunately, didn’t keep any specific data on the responses I received. I wish I had, because they were really interesting, and it means the rest of this post is going to be primarily anecdotal. Oh well.

Regardless of other responses, almost everyone (of course) asked me why I was leaving. When I explained, I got a combination of three different reactions.

The first was just shock that I’d actually do it. So many people replied with some variation on “I can’t believe you’re actually doing it!” My favorites were the “Yeah, right!” reaction, like I was making some weird joke. As though it was a monumental feat; a life change equivalent to quitting my job. That’s how those comments felt: shock and awe at my bald audacity, sometimes mixed with little passive-aggressive “whatever, dude”-style admonitions, as though my decision to leave a social media site was somehow a direct affront to them.

The second was seemingly genuine sadness, on the scale of a friend moving out of state. “Really sad to see you go. I hope we can keep in touch.” This reaction was so common, I actually began to internalize it, as though I were moving away and somehow leaving everyone I know behind. I caught myself, one night, actually contemplating if I was giving up friendships, before I shit-canned that entire line of thought because it’s frankly ridiculous. If neither I, nor you, are willing to maintain contact outside a social media outlet, it’s not much of a friendship, is it?

Last, and most surprising to me, were the people who desperately wanted to follow me, but felt chained to the service. I got so many variations on “Man, I really wish I could quit Facebook.” As though they were Mark Zuckerberg’s personal indentured servants. I would – and do – universally respond with “You can. Just do it.” Without fail, every single person had a reason they couldn’t leave. I won’t call any of them “excuses”, because I honestly don’t know the validity of the reasons from their point of view. I only know my own: it’s just a social media site.

In theory, social media should just be a tool with which you maintain connections and communicate with friends, relatives, and colleagues. I’m sure that was the original intent. In our modern, corporate-capitalist reality, it is a quagmire designed to feed statistics into algorithms in order to satiate advertisers and gather data on users, Facebook being one of the worst. And they’re damned good at keeping you there, whether you actually like it or not.

I hated every minute I spent on Facebook. Beyond the superficial problems like the interface and algorithms that seemed designed with an eye toward endless torment, I watched my friends and family get into unending, cyclical, pointless pissing matches. It was almost never a dialogue. For any topic deeper than food porn or television, conversations almost universally fell into two categories: slavish agreement and vicious opposition.

Of course exceptions exist, but overall Facebook just isn’t a place for real dialogue. You’re either the echo in someone’s chamber, or the invader thrashing against the walls of their stronghold until the inevitable block or unfriending. When attempts at genuine questions or conversation are made, even the most reasonable people have been conditioned so heavily for attack they lash out, their first reaction either anger or condescension, or both. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been condescended to on Facebook, both by loose acquaintances and people ostensibly calling themselves my friends.

Over time, I found my own interactions increasingly falling into these categories as well. I didn’t feel good about myself or the time I spent on Facebook. In spite of many people expressing sadness that they’d no longer see my “reasoned rants”, I began to feel my public sociopolitical opinions taking on a vindictive, malicious tone rather than just constructive anger. I definitely found myself posting for reaction rather than dialogue. It’s an unintentional (I believe) side-effect of this sort of attention economy that driving users to post with likes and arguments in mind leads to a definitive dumbing-down of expression, sometimes bordering on (if not directly delving into) radicalization. I didn’t feel like a good person on Facebook.

On top of all that, I realized how susceptible I am to the tricks social media uses to mine attention. I definitely fall prey to the micro-doses of dopamine that come along with every little notification, and I can see an unambiguous effect on my depth of concentration. If I’m ever going to be a serious writer, I can’t do that if I can’t keep my mind on task for extended periods of time, and social media is designed to train a person’s brain away from deep thinking and into constant, shallow distraction.

These thoughts simmered in my brain for a long time before I came across an episode of The Ezra Klien show where the founder of Vox Media interviews Cal Newport, author of the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. It’s a great springboard toward understanding social media’s effect on your brain, and a show I suggest everyone listen to. Here’s the link to that episode. Of similar interest, I’d suggest checking out episode 71 of Waking Up with Sam Harris, entitled What Is Technology Doing To Us?, as well as episode 68 of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast, entitled Shadenfacebook.

After listening to that first podcast, I had a conversation with my cover artist, Carmen Sinek (www.toomanylayers.com), about this very subject. She’d been struggling with a lot of the same thoughts and issues as I had, and sent me links to several books on the subject. I haven’t read them yet, but I know Newport’s Deep Work is on the list, as well as Thomas Sterner’s The Practicing Mind and Adam Alter’s Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. All three are atop my TBR pile at the moment while I struggle to work myself into a routine that will train my brain for more productive, rewarding work.

Facebook, like any good company vying for your attention, makes it somewhat difficult to delete your account. It’s not a straightforward process, and after requesting the deletion, they purposely give you two full weeks to recant your decision, reminding you that all you have to do is log back in and everything will go back to “normal”. I didn’t recant, and my account was officially, permanently deleted over this last weekend.

I’m genuinely relieved. There are some things – like inviting friends to get-togethers at my house – that will become distinctly more inconvenient, for both me and my friends. Those inconveniences are worth exorcising the specter of Facebook and its inexplicable hold on my psyche. It’ll be a tough road for a little while, while I train my brain to live without it, to find constructive things to fill the time I’ve regained, to move past the need for constant distraction.

It hasn’t quite worked, yet. In the last two weeks since I requested the deletion, I’ve definitely found myself hovering in spaces that can begin to offer me the same sort of mindless distraction I found in Facebook. Over time, I hope to fill that time and space with deeper, more thoughtful creative work. Something that improves and fulfills me. Until then, you’ll probably see me on Twitter (@GeekElite) and Reddit (Luke_Matthews) a lot more than I should be.

But never again on Facebook.

I’ve awoken the last few days with a rock in my chest. I’m clearly not the only one; everyone around me is just a little more frazzled, a little more distant, a little more afraid. The media is already trying desperately to paint the picture of a more reasonable Trump (I say “more reasonable”, but that’s such a low bar as to not really matter), trying to normalize the horror of what we’ve done here.

The knot in my core is ever-present, fueled partially by anger, but mostly by fear. My wife and I have spoken almost every day since the election about what comes next, and we can’t seem to come to any solid conclusion. We just know that both of us are afraid. While we were talking on Wednesday afternoon, discussing the things that frightened us most and attempting to highlight the good things in our lives to cling to, there was a pause in our conversation and my wife looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, simply, “I’m a woman.”

It might seem odd, or stupid, or obvious, but the words were an expression of every fear that Trump’s election has brought to the surface. She’s looking at a world where the leader of our country sees her as sub-human, and it broke my heart. I feel like I want to say more, but that moment is now so indelibly scarred into my memory that I’m not even sure I can articulate it. It is, honestly, not my place.

In the grand scheme of people in danger from Trump’s presidency, I don’t really rate. I’m a late-30’s white male, about as privileged as one can get, and not technically the target of the wave of hate extending out from the election’s splash. Yet, I’m still bone-shakingly afraid. My political views (primarily liberal-leaning) have put me in the crosshairs, too. I’ve been called a “libtard”, a “useful idiot”, a “cuck” – all buzzwords of the Radicalized Right that tilted this election. It wasn’t until yesterday, though, that I realized where a lot of my real fear is rooted.

In my lifetime, I’ve come to realize that many (read: most) conservatives – even the ones who might not consider themselves part of the alt-right extreme – harbor a core disdain for artists. Oh, they’ll partake in art – listen to music, read books, watch movies and TV, maybe even go to plays or buy artwork or photography. Their dichotomy is to engage in art while viewing the careers of artists invalid. I’ve had direct personal experience with conservatives telling me I should not be able to write as a career, that it’s “not a real job”, and because it’s not, it’s not a positive contribution to society.

To them, art is a hobby, and there is no value in it being a career. My skills as a writer are not useful unless being applied to a corporate job or business venture. And that’s the inherent hypocrisy I’ve seen from conservatives in my lifetime: an emphasis on the importance of entrepreneurship and individuality while simultaneously deriding anyone who isn’t part of a corporate system. It’s an amount of cognitive dissonance I can’t even fathom.

I realized, yesterday, that a Trump Presidency very likely means the death of my writing career in the womb. Under liberal leadership, art can be a career, the means and end together. Under conservative leadership – especially extreme right leadership – art only exists as rebellion.

Many of you reading this will key on that word, offering advice akin to “Well, then, rebel.” I’m still trying to figure out how that fits into my life, my psyche. As a white man, I’ve not had to endure the life of rebellion that so many marginalized people have lived every single day. I am, I think, still in shock, mourning in the quagmire of uncertainty where there was once stability.

I know, both intellectually and emotionally, that I am not endangered here like so many others. Others like my wife who, in spite of being solidly middle-class and white, is part of the 51% demographic that will see a definitive threat to their physical, mental, and social well-being. Like my gay friends, whose marriages are now on the chopping block. Like my trans friends, whose very existence is seen as an existential threat. Like the Muslims I know, who face the very real threat of deportation and mass violence.

I know I am not those people. And I know I will stand up for them and beside them in whatever ways I can. But sharing my own fear is the only way I know how to even try to move past it, to become productive again. To try to write again. Because, over the last five days, the conservative attitude toward my art has been validated and normalized by the election of their own demagogue. In a time when I know, intellectually, I should stand up and make myself heard, I find myself questioning the validity of my art, of my choices. Questioning its value. Questioning my self-worth.

I’m hoping for some level of catharsis from this writing. I can look at this blog post and say to myself I’ve used my words as and expression of my fears, and that’s helpful. I haven’t yet summoned the strength to just barrel back into the work – like I desperately need to – and I’m hoping this will help. I’m hoping I can find the strength to stop worrying about my art as a career, and engage in it as my own personal form of rebellion. I guess I won’t know until I click “Publish”.

Today, I voted. In a surprise to exactly no one, I voted for Hillary Clinton.

I’ve said a lot of stuff over the last year about voting against a semi-sentient rotting pumpkin with a mis-placed merkin, but that’s not the only reason I voted today. I’m not just voting against fascism, I’m voting FOR Hillary Clinton.

I believe in HRC. She has a proven track record of public service for longer than I’ve been alive. Her policies align with my values. She’s simultaneously hard-assed and compassionate, intelligent and genuinely kind. She’s the single most qualified candidate for POTUS this country has ever seen.

And that’s what it takes to rise to that position as a woman in our society. If she’d only had Obama’s qualifications, or Romney’s, or pretty much any of the previous candidates’, she’d be looked over and left behind. But she’s fought her way to this place by being better than every contemporary in her company. To quote everyone’s favorite play, she “got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a self starter”.

She’s intelligent.

She’s proactive.

She’s cunning.

She’s knowledgeable.

She’s experienced.

If this were literally any other election against any other opponent, this would be 100% of my reasoning. But this is not a normal election, and the spray-tanned gibbering mouther is not a normal opponent.

In previous elections, I’ve been mildly concerned about one candidate or the other. Previous candidates’ values have run counter to my own, and I, of course, don’t want to be led by someone whose policies I oppose. But I understand the workings of our democracy and if that person is elected, I know we’ll soldier on and there are checks and balances.

But that’s not how I feel this time. I’m stressed. Genuinely afraid. And not the kind of fear the GOP whips up with propaganda. Not disgusted rage, or frenzied xenophobia, or moral indignation. No… genuine, sinking, suffocating fear. A gut-churning fear that the world I’ve grown up in, with all its progress and flaws and bright spots and blemishes, is in danger of ending.

So, this time, I don’t get to vote for Hillary solely on the basis of her own qualifications, although that is enough. No, in this election we’re quite literally voting against a fascist demagogue whose rhetoric echoes the worst the human race has ever had to offer. A misogynist, racist, ableist, subhuman caricature whose vision for our nation would undo literally the entirety of our progress since our founding.

The entire world looks to us as the superpower we claim to be, and is collectively holding its breath against the potential for the worst parts of our nature to become normalized across the globe. And I won’t stand to be a part of that. I will stand on the right side of history.

I look forward to seeing our country’s first woman President. I look forward to being led by a capable, sophisticated, progressive President. Even though it’s too much to ask, my hope is that she’ll stand side-by-side with cooperative Legislative and Judicial branches to push our country forward rather than stall in quagmire or de-evolve.

Barack Obama has been my President. I’ll miss him, dearly. He is a man who has accomplished more positive outcomes for the United States in his eight years in office than nearly any other President in my lifetime, and all of that in the face of the single most obstructionist Legislative branch in our history. Although I’ll miss him, Hillary Clinton has the chance to carry on his legacy, and improve upon it. To make history herself.

Today I voted.

I’m With Her.