How to do it:

Think back to a time before the world seemed quite so dark. That might be Biden’s last term, or you might need to go pre-COVID, to Obama’s time in office. Identify several things you cared about enough to invest time or money in. Make a broad list: helping kindergarten kids learn to read, pulling invasive weeds at a local park, or walking shelter dogs all count. So does taking your elderly neighbor dinner, or researching the best appliances to reduce energy use. List anything you spent time or money on that you cared about. It doesn’t even have to be altruistic: maybe you were saving up for a vacation, before COVID hit.

Now evaluate whether your contributions have changed. For each item on your list, decide whether you are putting more, less, or the same amount of energy in. If you are spending less energy, try to figure out why. Maybe you’ve replaced climate change activism with anti-fascist work. Perhaps your economic situation changed and now you have a second job. Or maybe your circumstances changed with COVID and you can’t do some of the things you used to do. It’s also likely that you’re at least a little burned out and not sure it really matters.

Finally, consider whether you’re spending your energy the way you want. Your shifts may be conscious and intentional. Maybe you love pulling invasive weeds, but you really feel like you need to spend your Saturdays protesting. That’s valid! If protesting feels rewarding, keep doing it! But if you find yourself struggling to get to the protest, consider this: if removing invasive weeds makes you feel happy at the end of a long exhausting day, maybe that’s what you should be doing.

Activism shouldn’t be about spending every minute doing the hardest, least rewarding thing we can think of. Yes, sometimes we need you to go do something that doesn’t feed your soul, but you have to balance that with things that keep you motivated and engaged.

If you’re low on energy, or fighting constant despair, go back to basics: what do you care about? Being engaged and caring about something is fighting fascism. They want us demoralized and exhausted.

Go care about something right out loud.

This post illustrated with an image from UnSplash (https://unsplash.com/license) or Wikimedia Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)