January 2025 has blown through the world like a sci-fi storm. Snow in New Orleans, fire in LA, fragile cease-fires and a new US presidential administration bent on causing confusion. Oh, and an asteroid has a 1% chance of hitting Earth in eight years.

On the home front, I’ve had Arctic-grade temperatures, potty training and a perpetual deficit of time.

It’s chaotic – and we react to chaos. That came clear as I chatted with three other writer friends last night. “How do you escape?” one of us asked.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially when I glance from my home office computer – the well spring of chaotic news – to the bird feeder. Not only do my eyes get their recommended “20 seconds looking at an object 20 feet away once every 20 minutes”; my BRAIN gets to pause and remember that my back yard is not on fire and someone (a flock of juncos, a pair of eastern bluebirds and my resident cardinal family) still appreciates sunflower seeds.

I need escape hatches in place before the wave washes over me. Here are mine:

Remain grounded: In early November, my cousin shared this really good “10 ways to be prepared and grounded” from Waging Nonviolence, along with her decision to focus her attention and effort on a few issues, starting locally. It helped remind me that I don’t have to solve, react to or even chime in on every one of the world’s problems. It also inspired me to choose a few areas in which I can dig in and be active, learn and hopefully contribute: worldwide, local. I’ve decided to learn as much as I can about Ukraine and the Russia threat on the world stage and about children’s issues and “people without addresses” locally. Just narrowing the scope helps.

Hold onto reality: “How to remain a reality-based human in 2025” by Pamela Paul what just what I needed to read (and laugh out loud at) today. Refuse to react; engage in small rebellions; remember that artificial isn’t always better – without trying, I’ve been doing a lot of these things anyway this month. Seeing it in the New York Times somehow confirmed that wanting to turn off the maybe-bots on Bluesky and instead go outside and talk to the birds is a perfectly acceptable course of action.

Run. Not away, but through. This is my escape hatch, daily. I look forward to it as a physical commitment that gets me up from the chair, out of the house, away from the wellspring of chaos and out into a real world where, okay, there’s traffic and some ugly old snow piles but life is ticking along today. Yesterday, to my friends, I called my daily run my escape hatch and that’s exactly what it felt like, hatching out of my warm house into the bright cold to strain my heart but not my mind or emotions for 50 minutes.

So is this month so stormy? Despite news of reneged federal grant freezes, yesterday wasn’t. I got to run six miles after work in balmy temperatures (only one pair of gloves!), as the sun set, a golden ball sliced into flickering wedges by the woods surrounding the horse farm down the road. One of the horses lifted its head and watched me approach.

If I tune into reality – my own five senses – the chaos subsides. It’s cloudy outside with a slight breeze. I hear the calls of a few neighborhood crows and distant traffic from the busy road a mile away. I’m holding hot water in a mug (which blessedly did not break when I nudged it off the counter with my elbow a few minutes ago as the water was heating). Hey, the electricity works!

Some people, this moment, don’t have working electricity, whether that’s because of war or disaster or not having a home. “Remain grounded” helps me see that something can be done and “hold onto reality” returns me to a sense of gratitude without tuning out. I can acknowledge that there’s trouble in my country and all over the world without panicking.

And I can run – that’s what I get to do on my lunch break today. Until then, into the fray.