It was a good week to tune things out.

We had a long-scheduled vacation planned last week, so instead of doomscrolling, we were riding roller coasters and eating amazing food. Instead of allowing my queer kid to panic about the future, I was singing “Singin’ in the Rain” with him while we were dressed in matching rain ponchos. We had fun, we kept the teenage bickering to a minimum, and (aside from my checking in to see whether the hostages were being released) we didn’t watch the news.

Am I worried about the future? Definitely. But I already knew I would be. No one gets to steal our joy. Not now, not going forward.

To get Jewish on you for a second, here’s a famous, much-loved saying from 1700s Chassidic leader Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the essential thing is not to fear at all.”

(And since I’m posting on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, here’s a raising-awareness story about Holocaust survivors in New York.)

If I need to protect my kids, I will. That’s all.

In the meantime, I am writing. I’ve already gotten my first couple rejections of the year, but two short stories have been shortlisted at various publications, and I will take that positivity. I finally worked out a thorny rewrite of a different story, and maybe now it’ll find a home. And I got through most of a first draft of a story during the trip (hi, I had the reading light on to write in the middle of the darkened plane, that was me). After that’s revised and out in the world, I’ll get back to wrestling with this new novel.

Keep reading, keep writing, support actual journalists, oppose book bans, attend your local meetings, hold on to hope as stubbornly as you can. Fight for it.