Time to make yourself uncomfortable to cope with Trump 2.0

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

The first time Donald Trump was elected president, I freaked out. I coped by starting a short-term blog called “100 Days of Good,” where for 100 days straight, I tried to do something positive with my time or money and wrote about it.

For 100 days, I delivered food to people in need, or donated blood and plasma, or chopped invasive plants out of parks — all kinds of things. When I was too busy to do, I gave. I also created a pledge drive along with it, asking others to do the same, and in the end something like 5,000 people signed up and pledged around 10,000 hours and I don’t know how many thousands of dollars in acts of kindness.

Jana Shortal, then with Minnesota’s “Bring me the News” program, interviewed me about it on TV, and I completely froze up and bombed, just like I did one other time 20 years ago when I was asked to be on a live radio show to talk about something funny I’d written about squirrels. During that radio show, I couldn’t think of a single funny thing to say about squirrels — urban nature’s comedians — and the show had to awkwardly cut to a commercial while the host hung up on me because I ruined his segment.

After the squirrel radio debacle, I vowed never again to do “talky stuff,” but the “100 Days of Good” project seemed like something where I needed to put my fears aside and make myself uncomfortable in the hopes of doing something.

And so now here we are again with a second Trump presidency, but to me it now feels much worse. Many people are anxious (though many are celebrating) and wondering what to do. And the truth is that I have no idea. I don’t feel like I have it in me to start another “100 Days of Good.”

My mom, a Trump voter who I love dearly, is always trying to get me to do Big Brothers Big Sisters-type stuff where I have some kind of mentoring relationship with a kid who needs a positive role model. I always tell her that I’m no role model, that I can barely keep myself alive and that I have no idea, really, how to live. My best advice would be to tell the kid to maybe follow me around for a while at a safe distance and to not do anything that I do, and maybe to carry a fire extinguisher so that if I start on fire he can put me out, but overall, to consider my life a warning for what he might someday become if he doesn’t get right.

And so my advice during these times would be to do whatever you can that best suits who you are, where you’re at. I’ve decided the best way for me to move forward is to pay attention to all these organizations that fill a need around Minnesota, the nation and the world that are facing severe budget cuts and even elimination, find an alternative charity or service that can help fill this need and give them my money.

I don’t want to tell people who or what to donate to, but there are hundreds of quality local charities at GiveMN.org, many of which have received potentially catastrophic funding cuts. And maybe it’s not charity at all — maybe you donate to your targeted local public and private universities, or to news organizations who are doing an increasingly difficult service.

I want to do this so that the people who know what to do, and who are willing to do it, have the resources they need to get it done. My plan is to give enough to make me uncomfortable. Because a lot of people in need who were already desperately uncomfortable are about to become much, much more so.

This can’t wait until the end of the year. A tax write-off as a last minute afterthought isn’t what’s needed. And so maybe you make yourself a promise: I’ll increase my charitable contributions by 10% over last year, or 20%, or 50%. And maybe you have a favorite charity, but you reconsider the balance of that favoritism in light of new, perhaps more urgent needs. My own plan is to more than double what I gave last year, because that’s the amount that will make me uncomfortable.