I woke up this morning with a strange sense of readiness. There is something clarifying about having a very young child, chiefly the overwhelming awareness that life goes on. I say this, and immediately it looks wrong to me, because it could be read as a lack of grief or a lack of respect for the grief of others, but it is real, it is how I feel. That’s done. Now we live in what happens next.

I live my life very happily in the absence of any strong sports allegiances. Stay with me: it connects. Maybe you can see it, actually, maybe it’s obvious: one of my points of clarity this morning is how much electoral politics resemble a sports game, where everyone is desperate for the binary conclusion of winning or losing. We all, me included, for these past months, have been caught up in hope and despair and the rending of garments and the horror of anticipation and the drumbeat of narrative and I for one am tired of that. We have been drowning in other people’s money and I am tired of that. It will never not be that. I will always vote for what I believe to be the greatest possible good, but the element of it that feels like a football game: I don’t like it. It doesn’t give us anything. We have real problems to face, real tasks ahead of us, and I recognize that many of them will come as the result of that football game, so in that way it’s relevant. But it is not to be mistaken for direct action. It is a game. It is not to be mistaken as real.

A friend sent me a text this morning that included a quote from Marc Maron, reading “Try to realize that you don’t have to annihilate yourself in the face of cultural annihilation.” And yes. Exactly. Yes.

A lot of us, I think, felt annihilated in 2016. And I just don’t want to feel that way now. I understand if others feel it, I would never say it was wrong. But for me, it’s not useful. It’s part of the football. I look at the world that brought us to this point and I think, my god, the football is the least important thing. There are real annihilations happening. There is annihilation enough for us all.

I drew this comic last week because the third of November was the anniversary of the day we lost Paul, and I wanted to talk about Paul, to spend time with Paul, to live a little bit more with Paul. So that’s what I am going to go do. Be with Paul, be with Dave and the baby, make art, and do some things that are not football, are not internet.

We are still alive. Remember that we are, and the responsibility is to keep one another that way. Keep watering your garden. Keep the softest hand against the softest cheek. Reserve your energy for when it is sure to be needed. I love you.