What do I do with my hands?

After a quiet December, I found myself with a new position as Editorial Director overseeing three platforms at once, holding interviews to gain material for two articles I'm excited to write for Inked Mag and Switchboard, more client work as a coach, a trip to New Mexico to plan my next big retreat, a Montana cabin weekend where I learned that yes I can still play hockey, and a trip to Mexico for the retreat portion of my Scale With Purpose small business cohort, where I'm learning to grow as a business owner.

Now that I'm home and settling back into life (and a bit overwhelmed with work), the world feels like the political version of eating Warheads-flavored Pop Rocks — I'm sure enough of you are geriatric millennials like me to understand those candy references. While this is not a political newsletter, and we all deserve a space where we can de-activate for a moment, I'm also a communicator and a person who ingests a probably-unhealthy amount of news from a variety of sources. It's come to my attention that some of these stories are flying under the radar, and it doesn't feel possible to send out a newsletter and pretend like the following isn't happening under our noses.

CDC data is being deleted in an effort to delete any mention of topics that could be deemed "DEI." This means any studies that mention sexually-transmitted diseases, vaccines, toxic substances and disease registry, and many, many others.

Elon Musk's aides locked Office of Personnel Management workers our of their compute systems, taking over a database that includes the personal information including Social Security Numbers of millions of federal workers, with no way to track what they are doing with that information. These are people who do not have the clearance to access this information.

Trans and Queer people are being actively erased from the United States in an official capacity. In addition to this US Travel page where LGBTQ has changed to LGB, all forms that request gender are now being changed to sex, with the only options being "male" and "female" (also erasing intersex people) and the mention of pronouns is now forbidden in email handles — this is not only disappointing to trans and nonbinary folks who simply want to get that question out of the way without making a whole "thing" about it, but also to every Alex, Sam, Chris, CJ, and Joe who come onto a video call after chatting for months and are greeted with an awkward, "oh, heh heh, I had been picturing you as a ."

Roughly 125 migrant bald eagles enjoyed the sun and protection from wind along the river where I live, defying borders and reminding us all that life transcends political divide.

And that's just been in the past few days and isn't even really rinsing the poop off the boot. Tariffs, counter-tariffs, postponed tariffs. Guantanamo Bay, the "salute," ICE entering schools. The list goes on. But what do we do with this information? That answer is different for everyone. Some of you will, disappointingly, be OK with this because it doesn't yet impact you and you have been led to believe that these don't impact people you love — I promise you, they do, and it will be heartbreaking for everyone when you realize the repercussions of your grievance politics. Others will feel overwhelmed and numb. What I recommend is picking one thing to stay focused on, and perhaps your friends have other things they can focus on so collectively you have a broad understanding. If you are called to act, whether that means our democratic and legal right to peacefully protest or sending your representatives strongly worded letters, well, my advice is to be careful. If you're confused, ask me about a trip I took to DC in 2000.