Land of Trees and Lemmings

RIP, Vine. You’ll be dearly missed.

When you struggle with your mental health on a daily basis, it can be hard to take action on the things that matter most to you. The mental barriers anxiety creates often appear insurmountable. But sometimes, when you really need to, you can break those barriers down. This week, with encouragement from some great people on the internet, I pushed against my anxiety and made some calls to members of our government. Here’s a comic about how you can do that, too. (Resources and transcript below.)

Motivational resources: There are a lot! Here are a few I really like:

Emily Ellsworth explains why calling is the most effective way to reach your congressperson.

Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.

Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.

Informational resources: There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:

Find your representative at house.gov

Find your senators at senate.gov

Use the “We’re His Problem Now” scripts when calling (or write your own!)

I found this resource that helps facilitate more active resistance in the form calling your local government officials and representatives.

As you can see in the screenshots, once you pick you issue and choose your area, you are directed to your local representative and even given a script (that you should feel free to add to or edit as you see fit)

The link and a blurb is below

https://5calls.org/

5 Calls:

HP: 2

Spells per day: Cloudkill, Telepathic Summons, Sleep (casts on Self),

Just seen the movie and oh god. OH GOD.

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

Hi, Mark. I’m the developer of “Black Rose” “Captured”, and “Otherworld Hospital”, and I’ve been a long-time subscriber and fan of you, ever since your early days of ’Let’s Playing’. You help me with my depression, and you help me feel like I have friends, even though I’ve never actually met you or the gang (I’d be too nervous to, anyway). You help me feel like I’m somewhat normal. Even though I just sit here and cry sometimes, you always make me laugh.

Seeing you play my games helps motivate me to keep developing them and get better at it, as becoming a successful, appreciated game developer has been my entire life dream since I was very young. It’s been a long journey or depression, anxiety, devastation, humiliation, isolation, lack of motivation, and sadness, but you help me press on.

I can only hope that maybe, possibly, if I get lucky, you just might see this. I’m getting emotional now even just typing this out, it’s just that you’ve helped me so much in ways that many people can’t see or understand.

 Don’t Stop Believing 

Bohemian Rhapsody 

Living On A Prayer 

Come On Eileen 

Sweet Caroline 

Shot Through the Heart 

Pour Some Sugar on Me 

Sweet Home Alabama 

Under Pressure 

Shook Me All Night Long 

Ice Ice Baby 

Cotton Eyed Joe

500 Miles

Wonderwall 

Buddy Holly 

A Thousand Miles 

Teenage Dirtbag 

Red Solo Cup 

Mr Brightside 

Never Gonna Give You Up 

Eye of the Tiger 

Chicken Fried 

American Pie 

I Love Rock and Roll 

Dancing Queen 

Don’t You Want Me

We Will Rock You 

The Time Warp 

Hey Jude 

Piano Man

This Is How We Do It

Drops of Jupiter 

Hey Soul Sister

In The End 

All The Small Things 

Stacy’s Mom 

Kryptonite 

All Star 

You Found Me

Bad Day 

Bring Me To Life 

Dance, Dance

Sugar We’re Going Down 

I Write Sins Not Tragedies 

All The Small Things 

Ocean Avenue 

Dirty Little Secret 

Margaritaville 

Sk8er Boi

Brown Eyed Girl 

Life Is A Highway 

Some Nights 

Little Lion Man 

Breakeven

Hey There Delilah 

Viva La Vida

Use Somebody 

Carry On My Wayward Son 

Take On Me

1985 

Iris 

I’m Awesome 

Seven Nation Army 

September 

Since U Been Gone

Skinny Love 

Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)

Bye Bye Bye 

Say It Ain’t So 

Somewhere Only We Know 

I’m Yours 

Last Resort 

My Girl 

Tiny Dancer 

Roxanne

Shout 

I’m a Believer 

Soul Man

Feel Good Inc 

Check Yes Juliet

Walking On Sunshine 

MMM Bop

Pumped up Kicks 

Hooked On A Feeling 

It’s A Beautiful Day

Summer Girls 

Before He Cheats 

Happy Together

You Make My Dreams Come True

Build Me Up Buttercup

Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

DONTTRUSTME

Shake It (Metro Station)

Juke Box Hero