Life in Activism: One Great Idea

Reader Nicolas Gaffney wrote me last week to share a new project he is launching, and to ask for my feedback on it:

Today I launched A Day Off From Trump.

The idea germinated a few weeks ago when my wife Marie and I were going back and forth about the latest Trump news before we’d even finished our coffee. Not fighting each other—just both of us angry at what we were hearing, same as basically every morning.

Then she stopped mid-sentence and said, “We’re doing it again.”

That stuck with me. I’ve cared about politics my whole life—ran for local office twice, canvassed, volunteered. But somewhere along the way, reacting to him had taken over our mornings, our conversations, even which friends and family I still felt like I could talk to.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to stop paying attention. The stakes are real. But I think there’s a difference between staying engaged and running on outrage until you’re burned out and useless for the actual work ahead—organizing, volunteering, showing up for the midterms.

So I’m taking one day—Wednesday, September 9th—completely off from Trump news, commentary, and social media. Not forever, not even a week. Just one day to reset, then come back with renewed purpose and energy.

I wrote up the full reasoning here if you’re interested. There’s also a site where you can see what it’s about: Day Off From Trump.

I’d be curious whether you’re seeing this same exhaustion in the people you interact with or write for—not disengagement, just burnout from the constant reacting.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I wrote Nick back to tell them that I thought this was a great idea. If you are interested, please go check out his website and sign up to participate.

I would like to add some thoughts in the same vein as Nick’s project and, if I may be so bold, take his thinking a step further: every politically engaged citizen should take a significant part of every day off from not only Trump, but from politics and the news more generally. Doing so will deepen your life, improve your relationships with others, increase your health, and, perhaps counterintuitively, increase your ability to stay politically engaged over the long run. However, doing this isn’t easy, because you can’t just stop doing something with your time—you have to find something else to do with that time instead.

Allow me to explain.