Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Well, now that the hoopla is over with, and no matter how vague (or symbolic) you feel the campaign sloganeering central tenet of the victor actually is, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be "change" afoot. Maybe it will be good, maybe it will be imperceptible, maybe it will be totally mismatched with any expectations you've projected on to the outcome.

Just understand this: if there's any particular "change" that you want, just sitting back and hoping for it now that the election is done won't actually change anything. Being a lone voice sternly tapping keyboard keys on blogs and messageboards won't actually change anything. To get anything done, you'll have to join coalitions, form movements, inspire and lead others. You know, work at it.

For me right now, I'm a bit focused on personal changes. I'm considering dropping my long-held psuedonym and working future projects under my real name. My "branding" (as much as I loathe the term and it's ramifications) needs an overhaul and a focus. The "Kineska" brand in particular needs to find it's way back to something beyond drunken anime ranting.

Which will probably be easier to achieve, because health changes pretty much dictate that my PWI days are over. Besides this run-in with acid reflux, I've found out that I have likely inherited my father's liver condition. It's sitting there, dormant, like a bomb waiting to go off once I turn 50. Because this disease is so rare, there's no real solid proof that lifestyle and diet changes have any real effect. The damage may already be done. But knowing what I know about what it will be like after that bomb goes off, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

It's also going to focus me on something that has previously been an abstraction for me up to this year: health care. Now I join the legions of people with a "pre-existing condition", and that pretty much ties me to my job and my existing (and deteriorating) health insurance benefits. If I try to go indie, or switch careers, or lose my job otherwise (did I mention my company announced 3000 layoffs the other week?), then the likelihood of finding any kind of affordable coverage is substantially poorer. There are a lot of advantages my current coverage and access probably have over socialized and single-payer systems, but at the rate that's being eroded due to my company cutting it's expenses and commitments, that's not saying much. I'll have to do a lot of work evaluating the comparative risks.

Nothing's going to change overnight. But change must happen, because the alternatives are rather dire.