Focus feels impossible right now. There is so much happening—so much awful news breaking at an unrelenting pace, so many warning signs and red flags being hoisted—that it feels like you can't look away. At least, it feels like that to me. Which means that you're looking at a cascade of horrors instead of the things you're actually supposed to be doing.

This is something far beyond simple doomscrolling, this is full-on doom living. And it's completely untenable. And yet most of the time it feels impossible to shake.

Friday, when the Democrats caved on the spending bill, I was fully locked into the doom. I had a list of things that I needed to be doing but I couldn't do any of them. I had to keep refreshing the feed, keep reloading the page, keep checking for... something. Honestly, it was awful. It felt like I was trapped by my own brain.

And then I broke out of it.

I told myself I had to stop and do one thing.

For me, that one thing was to go for a walk. Chicago was in the grips of one of those glorious March surprises, where it was summer for the day. I'd been in my basement working/raging for hours and was missing it all. So I stopped, and I went outside, and I walked.

And you know what? It worked. By the time I was done with that walk—with doing that one thing—I was ready to do the next thing. The world had not stopped being a nightmare, but I was released from doom's clutches for a moment.

I have an old friend who's been in AA for a long time, and over the years when I've gone to him for advice on how to deal with one anxiety-producing thing or another, he's simply responded: "One day at a time."

That's how I'm thinking about things right now: One thing at a time.

Focus feels impossible right now. There is so much happening. And yet we all have to do work and school and live our lives. And it's hard—like monumentally hard—to focus on it. I get it. I'm struggling with it too. And I don't have great advice but I do have this:

Do one thing.

We are living through a period of protracted awfulness, and the end is not coming anytime soon. Those in power would like nothing more than to keep you exhausted and impotent, incapable of getting anything done (especially the things that will undermine their power). So do one thing.

It doesn't have to be big, it just has to be something. And when that one's over, move on to the next thing. Some days this will be easier than others (I'll be honest, today I have been shit at this, in fact this post is my one thing), but do what you can. Do one thing.

This is how we're going to get through: each of us doing that one thing, then doing the next thing, until each thing adds up to big things. So what are you waiting for? Put away your phone, look away from the doom, and do one thing.