Small Is Not Useless (Or: You Do Not Have to Fix America Before Lunch)
We have been sold a very American lie:
“If you are not changing the entire world, you are failing.”
This is the same culture that thinks:
- Hustle is a personality
- Burnout is a badge of honor
- And rest is something you earn after capitalism is finished with you
Let me offer you a more realistic, less cult-adjacent metric:
Did you:
- Tell one truth?
- Help one person?
- Learn one thing?
- Refuse to become a jerk?
- Keep your soul intact in a comment section?
Congratulations. You showed up.
🏛️ The Myth of the Grand Gesture
We love big moments:
- Big speeches
- Big marches
- Big historical turning points
But what actually holds civilizations together is:
Boring, repetitive, invisible maintenance.
Democracy does not collapse because people stop posting.
It collapses because:
- People get exhausted
- People get cynical
- People decide nothing they do matters
And then the worst people in the room take over the furniture.
🧰 You Are Not Atlas. Put the Country Down.
You are not required to:
- Fix voter suppression
- Rebuild the courts
- Educate every guy named Brad in Facebook comments
- And personally restore the rule of law before dinner
You are one person.
A very good person.
But still just one nervous system in a trench coat.
🧱 How Things Actually Change
History is not moved by crowds alone.
It is moved by:
- Millions of small, stubborn, unglamorous decisions
- To keep showing up
- To keep caring
- To keep choosing decency when cruelty is trending
Every authoritarian movement depends on one thing:
People giving up.
That’s it. That’s the whole playbook.
🗳️ “But It Doesn’t Feel Like Enough”
Nothing ever does.
Ask anyone who has ever:
- Fought for civil rights
- Fought for women’s rights
- Fought for labor rights
- Or fought for literally any progress we now pretend was inevitable
Progress always feels:
- Too slow
- Too fragile
- Too reversible
Because it is.
🛠️ Maintenance Is the Work
Empires fall from rot.
They are saved by:
- Teachers
- Librarians
- Nurses
- Neighbors
- Volunteers
- And people who still believe in boring things like “institutions” and “ethics” and “not letting lunatics run everything”
Maintenance is not glamorous.
It does not get a Netflix special.
But it is everything.
🕯️ You Matter More Than You Think
Every time you:
- Choose not to lie
- Choose not to dehumanize
- Choose not to quit
You are holding a piece of the structure together.
You are not failing because you are tired.
You are tired because you are doing the work.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
Subscribe at julies-journal.ghost.io
