It took less than a day for my happiness at Trump losing the election to fade. Perhaps Alex Trebek’s death darkened my mood. Maybe I’m just in the habit of feeling gloomy after everything else that’s happened this year. My garage is getting colder and I’m getting grumpier.

I still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re as divided as we ever were and Mitch McConnell is still in power. At least two of the nine Supreme Court justices are supremely unqualified for the position they hold. The pandemic is surging, with disturbing news about a mutation through minks bad enough that Denmark is killing all of the little creatures they can find.

We still have systemic racial injustice. We still have greedy corporations acting without accountability. We still have more problems than solutions, and people are dying.

I think Biden is probably a good and decent man. But what can he do?

Let’s face it… the run-off elections for the senate seats in Georgia are a long shot. This is Georgia we’re talking about. The same place where Stacey Abrams had her election stolen from her.

Biden is going into power with his hands tied. The GOP that produced Donald Trump is still in power and they will not allow Biden to do the things necessary to right the ship. The GOP will continue their hypocrisy, their blind war against progressive idealism, and the mess will continue to pile up.

The problem, at least for me, is a matter of hope. I just can’t bring myself to hope anymore. Yesterday, DoomScrolling was replaced with HopeSurfing, and I could only ride the wave for so long. In my experience, to hope is to set yourself up for pain in the form of disappointment or worse.

Hope and hurt are both 4 letter words.

It’s a bleak, secret truth, but it’s not the end. Whether there is hope of success or not, we keep trying. We write the next chapter. We clock in and do the work. We keep going in spite of hopelessness.

We have to continue paying attention and calling out racial injustices. We have to hold the people we elect accountable. We have to remember that black lives matter as matter as much as white lives, and that “all lives matter” is a lie as long as anyone is put in danger based on the color of their skin.

We have to remember that trans rights are human rights.

Different is not the same as lesser. Different is just different.

We have to keep doing the work, even if there is no hope of changing the world. Even if the work is just pouring your heart into a blog that hardly anyone reads. It’s not about hope. It’s about doing what’s Right.