How to do the Dishes While the World is Burning
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living your normal life while everything feels profoundly not normal.
You answer emails.
You buy groceries.
You laugh with friends, or at least try to.
And in the background—sometimes loud, sometimes a low hum—you’re carrying the knowledge that the U.S. is on fire. That state violence is real. That people are being detained, disappeared, and killed at the hands of ICE and other systems built to punish instead of protect. That the news keeps getting worse, and somehow you’re still expected to show up to work on time.
If you’re struggling to manage daily tasks right now, you’re not broken. You’re responding appropriately to a deeply broken reality.
This isn’t a guide to “staying productive” during collapse. It’s a guide to staying human.
First: Name the Cognitive Dissonance
One of the hardest parts of this moment is the whiplash.
You can be outraged and still need milk.
You can be grieving and still have a meeting at 2pm.
You can care deeply and still feel distracted by trivial, first-world problems.
None of that makes you shallow or complicit. It makes you a person living inside capitalism during a crisis.
Instead of fighting the dissonance, try naming it:
“Of course this feels impossible. I’m being asked to live normally in an abnormal time.”
That simple acknowledgment can lower the shame enough to function.
Shrink the Definition of “Enough”
When the world is on fire, your capacity shrinks. That’s not a failure—it’s physics.
Right now, “enough” might look like:
Doing the bare minimum at work and logging off
Buying frozen food instead of cooking
Cancelling plans because your nervous system is fried
Letting the laundry pile sit one more day
Productivity culture will tell you to push through. Care culture says: adjust your expectations to match reality.
If you did one or two necessary things today, that counts.
Time With Friends Doesn’t Have to Be Escapist or Heavy
A lot of people feel stuck between two bad options:
Pretending nothing is happening
Talking about nothing but how bad everything is
There’s a third option: being honest without drowning.
Try this with friends:
Name the moment (“I’m really not okay about what’s happening, just FYI”)
Ask for what you need (“Can we talk about it for 10 minutes and then watch something dumb?”)
Let joy and grief sit at the same table
Laughter right now isn’t betrayal. It’s fuel.
Limit Your Exposure Without Turning Away
You don’t need to be online 24/7 to prove you care.
Doomscrolling rarely turns into meaningful action—it usually turns into paralysis. Consider:
Checking the news once or twice a day, not constantly
Following organizers and journalists instead of outrage accounts
Pairing information with action (donate, call, show up, then log off)
Caring for your nervous system is part of sustaining resistance. Burnout helps no one.
Reframe “First World Problems”
When everything is urgent and horrific, small problems can feel embarrassing to admit.
But here’s the thing: tending to your basic needs—food, rest, connection, routine—isn’t trivial. It’s what keeps you grounded enough to care longer.
You are allowed to:
Be upset about work stress and state violence
Want comfort while fighting for justice
Take care of yourself without earning it through suffering
This isn’t indulgence. It’s survival.
You Are Not Doing This Wrong
If all you did today was show up imperfectly—angry, tired, distracted, still trying—that is not nothing.
The systems harming people want us numb, isolated, and depleted. Choosing to care for yourself and each other, even in small, unglamorous ways, is a quiet refusal.
So do the dishes if you can.
Rest if you can’t.
Hold your people close.
And remember: the fact that this feels hard is evidence that your humanity is intact.
Take care of yourself. We need you here.