Focus on the things you can control and not the things you can’t...

November 6, 2024

First of all, my apologies for not putting out the “Daily Joe” (As I have nicknamed the thing I do) last night. The White House was particularly quiet yesterday, and I, like probably everyone else, was on the edge of my seat watching the election coverage…for a while.

I’m on the West Coast, so by about 7 p.m., I was getting tired of the constant guesswork of the cable networks and decided it would be best to have a hot bath, pop some melatonin, and watch a few Gunsmoke reruns (The old half-hour “horse opera” type episodes from the 50’s). I’d keep an eye on the electoral count on my phone and try (unsuccessfully) not to obsess over what was clearly going to be an election “slugfest.” My wife and I then switched to Netflix to binge on Seinfeld reruns. I noticed the electoral count was stalled, but I also noticed that the once light blue states that hadn’t been called were slowly turning light red (I was following the count through AP).

Sometime right before midnight, as I was tossing and turning about, I decided to take one last look at my phone. I whispered a low “F*ck!” as I saw that Trump was three electoral votes away from taking back the office. My waking nightmare of scenarios in a second Trump term flooded my brain. There goes his legal troubles. There goes the convictions of the J6 participants. Here comes Elon Musk’s economic “policies” and RFK as head of HHS…YIKES!

I finally found a way to convince myself not to become overcome with anxiety by repeating, “Focus on the things you can control and not the things you can’t.” It was not so easy at first, but I kept at it. In between, I pondered my own life, what I would do come January, and especially, whether what I’ve been doing with this Substack account for the past year was worth it. After all, I started this as a way of providing accurate, objective, unspun information about the daily activities of the Biden Administration because no one else was doing it. “I’ll sleep on it,” I told myself. “Focus on the things you can control and not the things you can’t.”

Repeating the mantra to myself eventually worked, and I did get to sleep. I had weird, distorted dreams and woke up several times, but I still repeated over and over to myself, “Focus on the things you can control and not the things you can’t,” until I fell back to sleep.

Between the fitful sleep and trying to push the day’s events out of my head, I kept asking myself if I should continue doing this. I posted a note a few days ago that, no matter what, I’d keep going, but honestly, I thought I’d be writing about a Kamala Harris administration, not…well, you know! After all, my new subscriptions fell off after Joe stepped aside, and I spent a few minutes before dozing back off feeling sorry for myself.

Then, something interesting happened. I awoke to a slew of new subscriptions, much to my surprise. As the morning wears on (It’s just after 9 AM PST now), the “new subscriber” notifications keep coming. Well, hell, I can’t quit now!

So yes, I’ll keep going. I may change the name to something less…Trumpy, like “What Did The White House Do Today?” or something like that. But it’s important to hold the next administration accountable objectively and keep anyone who feels like continuing to tune in informed about what’s happening daily, not just what the media outlets feel like telling you. This way, you can continue judging for yourselves how policies, actions, speeches, press briefings, executive orders, etc., affect your daily lives.

Thank you for your continued encouragement and positive responses. Onward!