Yesterday, a friend I’d not seen in person in a while asked me how my back pain was doing. He asked because he follows me on Facebook, which I use as a personal diary, and I had mentioned back problems there frequently for the last several week. The odd thing about that is that I had one discrete episode of back pain, with a clear etiology related to an injury that I aggravated by exercising too soon, and I fully recovered from it weeks ago. He thought my back was still a problem because I was writing frequently about my fear that it might happen again and my extreme caution about exercising when I feel even the slightest crick in my neck.

I assured my friend that I was fine, but I was a little embarrassed to realize that I had been projecting these fears so frequently. And reflecting back on the last several months, I realized that a similar pattern kept happening. A series of minor health setbacks — bad allergies, a sinus infection, a short bout of covid, and then the back pain — had a disproportionate emotional impact on me. Even aside from the drain on my physical energy, when suffering from these ailments I felt unable to go about my everyday activities. Thankfully most of this happened during summer vacation, so there were few mandatory daily activities — but the collective impact is that I spent a lot of my summer bored and depressed. The back pain was worst of all, because its impact on my exercise routine sent me down a spiral where my entire life would have to change. I rewatch Star Trek on the rowing machine, for instance, so I would never watch Star Trek again and stop writing my blog on the topic. In fact, maybe I’d just stop writing anything, because who cares?

One might note a certain illogic to these reactions, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like I am having reverse-psychosomatic reactions to the political situation. I am carrying around a lot of anxiety about the actions of the Trump administration — including, most recently, uncertainty about whether the US military will invade the city where I live. More and more of the structure of our lives depends on the whims of the most selfish, stupid, and impulsive man alive, and I am 100% convinced that nothing durably good can happen politically in the US until he and his movement are out of power.

And yet, good things continue to happen to me. I was finally promoted. I had the opportunity to apply for a sabbatical. I’ve been exploring a variety of writing projects. I had a successful reading group this summer and plan to join a reading group this fall. I literally just responded to a session devoted to my work, at an interdisciplinary international conference. I have unique, fulfilling teaching. I live with a wonderful partner in a beautiful apartment. I have money in the bank and a credit score that could move mountains. Everything’s coming up Kotsko, except for the part where the world is ending.

Ironically, one of those things that’s coming up Kotsko is precisely my health. At my most recent annual physical, I got a clean bill of health except for one of the standard afflictions of middle age: high blood pressure, which I am now controlling with a side-effect free medication. The doctor even said to “keep up the good work”! But the anxiety has to land somewhere, and my body gave it occasion to land on fleeting ailments that my mind chose to interpret as signs of more widespread collapse.

Even the timing seems meaningful in retrospect. My allergies and sinus infection came as the first wave of tariff disruptions were happening, filling me with the fear that we might be in for a repeat of the Global Financial Crisis — and suddenly, when faced with the same allergy symptoms that I have had literally my entire adult life, I felt that I couldn’t keep going, that my body was attacking itself, that I could barely get up in the morning. My covid infection came after we returned from Mexico City, our first trip abroad post-Inauguration. We worried that we might face trouble at the border, but it was the easiest trip through Customs we’ve ever had. When I got the positive diagnosis a few days later, I felt bizarrely angry, and even kicked and dented our garbage can. It’s as though all the aggressive energy I’d been storing up to fight my way back into the country had to find its way back out.

Now that I’ve had this revelation, will I experience greater peace of mind? Probably not! Trump is still out there doing his thing, day after day after day! Important infrastructure of modern life is being torn out, likely never to be replaced. Trying to build my little life in the midst of all of that still feels simultaneously impossible and meaningless. How can I settle in and enjoy the privileges of a more stable academic career when there might not even be universities in any recognizable form by the time Trump finishes with them? How can I seek to interpret human politics and culture when both are being degraded beyond recognition?

But at the same time, how can I do anything else? What use is it for me to steal my life from myself, on Trump’s behalf? What else can I do in the face of apocalypse but build my avowedly useless little shelter?