Schedule update!

Hello, beloved Dread Club attendees!

I'm writing with our updated schedule. You are welcome to attend as many (or as few) events as you'd like, and you are also welcome to join us in the gather.town even if you can't make it to any events.

Here's what's happening:

Friday facilitated conversation from 5 pm to 6:30 pm mountain time (please note, this has shifted earlier than originally scheduled)

I shifted this earlier so that if any of us want, we can attend the Threshold Vigil on Friday evening (https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/threshold-vigil-tickets-272443785697). I will be attending, and we can debrief about it in the gather.town if anyone else attends. I've been to a Threshold Vigil before and it was really lovely to grieve together in a collective space.

Saturday facilitated conversation from 1:30-3 pm mountain time (no change)

Saturday evening watch party (with text chats in the gather.town) for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Sunday facilitated conversation from 10-11:30 am mountain time (no change)

Sunday writing workshop from 1-2:30 pm mountain time (writing prompts will be posted in the gather.town so you can join for the 'live' event or you can write on your own time)

I think it's going to be pretty excellent!

I will send out the gather.town link later this week, but wanted to send the updated event schedule now so that you can plan for attending the additional events if that's something that interests you.

I will also be sending out the handout with the questions for our facilitated conversations (there will be lots of flexibility to take the conversation in whatever direction feels most supportive, but I wanted to have a handout so that folks who can't attend can still participate) but I will most certainly not have that ready ahead of time, so you can expect that in your inboxes sometime on Friday.

Warmly,

Tiffany

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Many things are very bad right now.

The first Existential Dread Club conversations happened in July, 2021. Things were bad, then, too.

In those conversations we talked about what was contributing to our experiences of existential dread.

Here's some of what we said in our first meeting conversation;

I don’t know if existential dread is quite the right word for it, but like, a feeling of hopelessness and overwhelm and uncertainty about the future, because it seems like every time we do something to make some kind of progress - like we have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and they generate this phenomenal body of work. We have the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirit final report and they generate this incredible body of work. And within that body of work, there is so much education, so much emotional labour of Indigenous communities, and then it does nothing! The government does nothing with it and that contributes to my feeling of like, “Why? And how? And what even is the future?”

We went through that historic heatwave just, you know, 10 days ago. And that left me feeling more intensified feelings. I've been thinking about what kind of world we’re leaving for the people who come after us, and what we have done to this planet.

I think capitalism and how to actually deal with capitalism so that we can do something about all of these different things. Because there’s not really any incentive under capitalism to stop making money quarterly.

I see a lot of initial momentum towards maybe challenging capitalism, but I fear that this is just people online, on social media saying 'yes, this sucks,' but thinking that there’s no actionable things attached to challenging it in any way. And so I fear that it’s this moment where it’s possible but probably not gonna happen. And that’s really tough.

Definitely the general feeling of, like, hopelessness that’s reflected back to me when I chat with folks… it’s a lot.

We talked about friendship and trust and hope, and the effect of feeling hopeless and despairing and lonely. And we talked about what helps.

We talked about not being able to control other people, and how that makes things hard - how the actions we see people taking that cause harm can invite us to feel both responsible and hopeless, and how turning our energies towards the relationships where we can make a difference feels more possible, more hopeful, more generative. In those spaces of relationship, where trust has been developed and care exists, it's not about control, it's about influence and connection.

One participant said, "The smallest things we can do are the things that just help us personally, that we can only do for ourselves not to feel so much dread. And then as you get bigger it’s about trying to affect maybe your friends and family. And then it gets to trying to affect society and that’s where it gets bigger and bigger, but it also gets harder and harder."

A Weekend at the Existential Dread Club is my attempt to widen my circle of influence just a little bit, for just a little while.

I haven't been doing much organizing lately. I have mostly been hanging on by my fingernails to this life. Doing what feels possible, acknowledging that what feels possible is most often the smallest, most personal thing.

But I feel an intense amount of dread these days.

Things are bad.

Things are so bad, in so many areas.

Issues around the pandemic, and how we are watching 'the easing of protections' (to use a phrase from a dear friend) sparked the idea for this second Existential Dread Club event. There is growing existential dread for those of us who are disabled, chronically ill, medically complex, or otherwise at increased medical risk (due to personal factors, sure, but also due to structural factors like medical racism, transphobia, fatphobia).

But between having the idea and actually organizing anything, so much more has happened. War in Ukraine. Floods in Australia. Cost of living shooting up fast enough that people I know and love can't pay their bills. Texas coming after trans kids and anyone who tries to offer trans affirming care. The 'convoy'. Anti-mask demonstrations every week.

Everything present in those first conversations, escalating. Colonialism. White supremacy. Climate change. Capitalism.

And alongside all of this, I really miss organizing. I miss facilitating events. I miss conferences and retreats. I miss community spaces and the conversations in those spaces and the documents that grow out of those spaces. I miss being the past version of me who had energy for that kind of work, time for that kind of work, space for it.

So, this is a virtual retreat. A weekend to talk about what we're afraid of, what we're holding onto, how we're getting through.

There will be three facilitated conversations:

Friday, April 1 from 6:30-8 pm MST

Saturday, April 2 from 1:30-3 pm MST

Sunday, April 3 from 10-11:30 am MST

There will also be a gather.town set up for the weekend, where we can chat, post messages, maybe have a watch party together on Saturday evening. I'm hoping to capture a little bit of the casual conversation and social connection that I miss so much from facilitating retreats.

There will probably be a writing workshop, too.

You can join for whatever part of the events feels best for you and fits into your schedule. You can register here. There's no cost, but there's an option to donate if you want to.

For now, only the three facilitated conversations are formally scheduled, but as we get closer to the weekend, other events will be scheduled.

I think it will be nice.

In an 'everything is awful' kind of way.