Solar Warrior

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the Sierra Club thanking me and giving me the address where I was expected to go to speak at a hearing (or perhaps before at a meeting?) concerning the action being taken against TVA for continuing to dump coal ash into the waters here in Tennessee.
I feel like I am engaged in battles on many fronts these days.
But speaking anywhere in a formal setting on an issue of which I am only peripherally aware (tho clearly against) was not a battle for which I remembered signing up recently. I mean, I'll sign all the petitions guys. I'll make the calls when I can (which I'm pretty sure is how this misled voicemail-leaving Sierra Club volunteer/employee got my number and made the mistake). But I am in grad school, remember?
For a moment it was very much like the actor's nightmare I've had so many times. You're on stage or in the wings about to go on, and you don't know what production it is...
Had I volunteered and forgotten?? I mean, I am vehemently against dumping coal ash into our rivers. But no. I felt pretty confident this kind soul had reached me in error, tryin to reach some other more accomplished activist. One not overwhelmed by and often paralyzed by fear.
One not in his/her/their last year of grad school.
So I called and left a message for the unwitting phone tag opponent, and I suppose she realized her mistake and called the other Emily she was likely trying to reach...but she never called me back.
I bought a domain today to put up my website for school. www.emilykicklighter.org.
.com wasn't available, but I sort of like the responsibility .org implies.
It makes me feel like I'll somehow be held more accountable. More...organized. And I guess that's a comfort zone and a mine field for me simultaneously. Sometimes I question the size of my sense of responsibility. Meaning it can be so large and burdensome, it weighs me down. It slows me. It arrests my action. I can't possibly get it all done so I think I'll just crawl up in this hole with a book (or more often binge watch a tv series...I can always claim research) and ESCAPE from reality. And I question my organizational skills...I mean, do they really even exist?
Because minimizing stress is the best thing you can do for your health, I take great care in identifying and naming stress to weaken n tame it.
I currently have a lot for which I am being held accountable: a thesis project, applications for future writing endeavors (writing labs and internships), audition preparation for a few things coming up, all while rehearsing a brand new play and working with cohorts and our professor to figure out a new digital showcase platform. Mix in relationship maintenances, holiday, travel and a birthday that puts you on the back-side of your 30's, and I think you'll find a little stress to be quite natural. Even necessary.
But the unnecessary stress comes from the overwhelming responsibility I feel to live up to my own ideals. Ideally I'd just like to do no harm, but our infrastructure and cultural mores are unsupportive on this road less traveled. Straws and styrofoam, plastic bags and cutlery, and cars or trucks with noxious exhaust have started to illicit in me a strong physical repulsion or sensation that isn't unlike hearing nails scrape a chalkboard. And I often worry about the fact that most of the people I'm around most of the time don't have any averse reactions to these things.
I happened upon this article a couple of days ago and easily joked with my family about setting up the bunkers and prepping. The article's author, award-winning Canadian science journalist Alanna Mitchell, frighteningly asserts that a magnetic reversal of planet Earth's poles is imminent and natural and nearly due, and all the systems we've built as a modern society do not take this evidence-based hypothesis into account. Technology could be crippled...the Earth could be transformed. Many species may not survive.
I think most people might find this depressing, but there was a deep comfort in it for me. I used to frequent a shaman who would give me the same solace: Pachamama will take care of herself...it's not my personal responsibility to save her. My husband is also a great teacher/neutralizer when I feel burdened or overwhelmed by my aspirations for (and ultimately disappointment in) humankind. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: no one believes they can make a difference, but what if everyone thought they could? Finding the line to walk of accountability and responsibility without stumbling over into self-aggrandizing and false fault is a challenge I'm taking head on.
I thought .org's were only available to registered nonprofit groups and entities, but now I've got my very own. It kind of makes me worry about the validity of things I've read on the web that I assumed to be factual because of their being from .org sites, but mostly it makes me want to tell the truths I know and represent this domain family well.
As I was getting ready to write this, a film director/activist who moonlights as a professional fundraiser called soliciting donations for the Sierra Club. I took the recent snafu as a sign I should contribute to this reputable organization, but I guess there could be a slim chance I just fell prey to a new targeted elaborate marketing ploy to guilt people into contributing by calling them first by "mistake" to remind them of how their physical presence is very much appreciated at this important battle to which they had not actually committed, and then following up with a "would you [at least] like to support us with a financial contribution?" call.
I offered a monthly contribution. Ploy or no, I'll show up when and where I can as the "social justice warrior" I aspire to be. The Sierra Club is a .org afterall! They are on the frontline of many battles against this administration to protect our environment (while we're still lucky enough to be stewards).
That is until the solar flares and radiation win the war.
Gives new meaning to I'm with her.
Leave it to a Trump presidency to make an Armageddon-like prediction seem like relief.