i’ve watched a lot of friends make unnecessarily costly decisions under the assumption that every element of one’s life must be a political expression — including: staying in exploitative nonprofit jobs, forgoing kids bc of climate change guilt, hooking themselves up to an IV drip of political news when it makes them miserable, cutting off family with even slight political disagreements. and i think very little of it redounds to any public benefit. it often impoverishes their life and by extension others’. the most effective and resilient public interest advocates i know cut themselves and others a lot of slack, because life is hard enough.