A post-election check-in!

A quick note to say that I received some payments this month from some of you and I’m sorry about that! I thought I’d already paused paid subscriptions, but turns out I hadn’t. Now I have.

If you want me to donate your share to an organization, just comment and I will do so! If not, I will probably spend that $30 on candy cigarettes, just for fun and something to chew on in the horrible summer days ahead.

Now that I have you here, I can happily tell you that I played a small part in the campaign to re-elect Rep. Sylvia Garcia in the newly [ridiculously, unfairly] redrawn 29th Congressional district. So my track record as a social media manager/content producer when someone needs me remains undefeated. Only winners, baby.

I continue to enjoy this work, but it has changed significantly from when I used to be able to knock a couple of jokes out of the park on Twitter in between informative posts and feel good about my day. The channels don't work that way anymore -- if they work at all -- and times are dark. It's tough to laugh about politics when oligarchs have their foot on the algorithm and bots drown out any attempt at reality. I see it first-hand daily. It’s really bad.

I wish I had a good solution. I keep my head down and do the work, trying to move the needle back to a time when social media was fun and informative in my personal capacity, despite how it hurts some days to be light.

With another election season behind me, the adrenaline is starting to leave my body. During elections, I am on-call morning to night. I sneak off to the gym in the afternoon and get a couple of requests from a client while I’m getting my reps in. Each one is a little ping to the panic area of my brain that tells me I’m failing if I don’t get on that RIGHT NOW. I have learned to regulate some of that intensity over years of doing this work, but it’s still really intense in the weeks leading up to voting and during voting.

Then, today was the end of Amplify Austin, which is an important fundraising period for my Austin client, SAFE Alliance. Because SAFE has had federal funding AND city funding cut, any fundraising opportunity is vital in 2026. This year, I was happy to marry my love of animal welfare with my empathy for abuse survivors with this social media collaboration.

With that complete, I can spend a few days decompressing and trying to re-acclimate to normal life. Today I started cleaning up all of the messes that have gone un-cleaned, I ran some errands, I bought some groceries. While out, I passed a group of students outside of Waltrip High School protesting ICE along a busy street and street corner. There was a cop, there was a camera, I don’t know all that happened. But there was a lot of honking in support, including from me.

And as I drove away, I started to cry. Which is funny because I’d just told my therapist an hour before that I hadn’t cried in a while. That usually means I’m holding too much in. What was it? Tears of joy that these kids were out there doing the work. Tears of anger of all that they have seen. Tears that I don’t know what to do besides try my best and advocate and show up.

I will be posting more as I have time about runoffs and the absolute clown-show that the Republicans are putting forth in November. I mean, outright garbage people. I mean, the worst of the worst. I mean, enough to make you talk to your friends about voting in the Texas Comptroller race. You’re going to be obsessed with the Texas Comptroller race.

Onward to November, y'all. Let's take every opportunity we have to turn this state, this country around.